Onomatological

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. The scholarly field dedicated to exploring the derivation and implications of names; the inquiry into the phonetic characteristics related to language; the investigation of how names evolve alongside their meanings across different cultures
2. Connected to the academic study of the origins, meanings, and historical development of proper names
3. Pertaining to the analysis and interpretation of names and their linguistic roots throughout time

Etymology: Onomatology is the study of names, and "onomatological" is simply the adjective for things relating to that study. It is built from two Greek elements: "onomatos", the genitive of "onoma", meaning "name", and "logia", from "logos", meaning "word" or "study". English took the noun form, onomatology, and then added the suffix "-ical", which comes via Latin "-ālis" and Old French "-el" and was attached to form adjectives from nouns ending in "-y" and "-ology". The root "onoma" is one of the oldest in the Indo-European family, reaching back to a prehistoric word for "name" that also gave Latin "nomen" and, through it, English "noun" and "nominal". So the same ancestry sits behind a grammatical term and a scholarly discipline, though the Greek branch took a different route to the modern word.