「名前プロジェクト」 (name_project) を立ち上げた関係で，onomastics （名前学，固有名詞学）をつまみ食いしながら学んでいる．今回は Bussmann の言語学用語辞典より onomastics の項を引いてみた．以下に引用し，この分野の概要をつかんでおきたい．

onomastics
Scientific investigation of the origin (development, age, etymology), the meaning, and the geographic distribution of names (⇒ proper noun). Onomastic subdisciplines include anthroponymy (the study of names of bodies of water), and toponymy (the study of geographic place-names), among others. Because place-names and personal names are among the oldest and most transparent linguistic forms, they are an important source of hypotheses about the history of language, dialect geography and language families. More recently, sociolinguistics (name-giving and use in society), psycholinguistics (psycho-onomastics and the physiognomy of names), pragmalinguistics and text linguistics have taken an active interest in onomastics. Onomastics also offers new insights into historical processes (pre- and early history, folklore, among others) as well as geography and natural history.

　上記の引用のなかの "the physiognomy of names" 「名前の人相学」などの存在には驚く．何を研究する分野なのだろうか？　名前にまつわる音形とイメージの符合や，漢字名の画数の問題なども含まれるのだろうかなどと妄想が止まらない．
　名前学の射程が広いことは「#5187. 固有名詞学のハンドブック」 ([2023-07-10-1]) や「#5339. 英語人名学の守備範囲とトレンド」 ([2023-12-09-1]) で触れてきた通りだが，ポテンシャルはまだまだ拡がっていきそうだ．

　・ Bussmann, Hadumod. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Trans. and ed. Gregory Trauth and Kerstin Kazzizi. London: Routledge, 1996.

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