lollardfish | (no subject)

(no subject)

So I'm writing about a guy called Robert of Jerusalem. He's called "of Jerusalem" because he brought stuff back from Jerusalem. What are names/titles like "of Jerusalem" called? There's a term for it but I cannot remember it.

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Are you thinking of 'byname'?

No, it's fancier and more literary than that ... I want to say eponym, but it's not eponym.

Damn, I used to know this. Does it start with L, perhaps?

I think perhaps "epithet" is the word you're thinking of. I googled for definitions of "byname" and that was one of the synonyms that came up, and the Wikipedia article it linked to included examples like "Richard the Lionheart".

These days, of course, the term has acquired specifically negative connotations, but apparently that's not how it used to be used.

I had thought of epithet, but rejected it as not the word as I was looking for because of those pejoratives, but I think you are probably right. Thanks!

Hmmmm. But that means I can't really use it in this paper.

Sobriquet?

How about "epitheton"? It's really just another word for "epithet," but lacks, I think, the negative connotations of the latter.

Or "cognomen"?

You're neat.

My mind is a storehouse of occasionally useful information.

How 'bout "kumquat"?

Okay, really, it's not the word you're looking for, but it's really fun to say...

Go ahead...say it: Kumquat!

See? Your day's looking better already...

I have a friend who used to collect kumwuats. Turns out that they don't go bad, they just slowly shrivel up and look like shrunken heads.

Then you leave them in a public area when you leave college for a semester in Amsterdam and let everyone wonder what they are.

I wanna say "genitive of origin," but I don't think that actually applies to English.

P.

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