Polyonymy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The condition of a single person, place, or object being known by many different names across languages, cultures, or periods of history
2. Having a multitude of names for the same thing, a feature seen in many place names, plants, and titles that accumulate over time
3. The use or presence of numerous synonymous names for a single referent, often reflecting the varied histories of the people who coined them

Etymology: Polyonymy comes to English through French "polyonymie", which itself descends from Ancient Greek "poluōnumíē", a noun built from "polyōnumos", meaning "having many names". The Greek adjective is a compound of "poly-", "many", and "onuma", "name", with the abstract ending "-ía" turning the description into a state or condition. The Greek form is attested only in Ionic dialect, so the word is a classical coinage in the sense that it reaches back to antiquity while being formed from familiar Greek parts. The word is a clear example of how English borrows scholarly vocabulary from French, which in turn borrowed from Greek. The pattern "poly-" plus "-onymy" is the same one that gives "synonymy" and "homonymy", so a reader who knows those words can read the whole structure at a glance: many names for one thing, rather than one name shared by several things.