eponymy

plural eponymies

1. uncountableusuallyThe status or condition of being an eponym (person lending their name to something); the distinction of having something named after oneself.

   The proper name, however, is Inis na Cilláin, the Island of the Little Church; and the “Mac Keilane,” to whose eponymy the island is referred, is a wholly fictitious personage.

   1902, Studies in Irish Epigraphy, page 46

   2 more examples

   Cervical incision during labor was soon adopted by others, and within the next few years communications on the subject were made by Skutsch, Knoch, and Wulsten, culminating in 1890 in Dührssen’s papers. The last gained for hysterostomatomy an established place among the standard operation of obstetrics, and for their author the reward of eponymy.

   1958, Harold Speert, Obstetric and Gynecologic Milestones, page 554

   [...] a new science, a branch of science, can be named for a scientist (Freudian psychiatry). There are other ways in which a scientist can be rewarded with eponymy. Minor subspecialties within a science can be named after an individual, or specific laws, theories, or instruments.

   1977, George Ritzer, Working: Conflict and Change, page 171

2. uncountableusuallyThe time during which one serves as an eponym (person lending their name to something); the tenure of an eponym.

   [...] I conclude that Tukultipalesar’s reign really commenced in B. C. 747, and that the prefect of Arrapχa should be placed (exceptionally) before the prefect of Razappa. His eponymy commenced in January of that year, and Ptolemy dates his æra from 1st Toth, about a month later.

   1872, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache, page 46

3. uncountableusuallyanthropologyThe practice of naming a tribe after its real or supposed progenitor (the eponym).

   1 more example

   The principle of eponymy (i.e. the principle of naming the tribe after a real or supposed progenitor) is so common that the absence of a body of Ostiaks bearing the name of some chief or hero is remarkable. When the eponymus is real (as he rarely is) the tribe takes its name from him in reality as well as in appearance. When the eponymus is fictitious or conventional, and the name of a hypothetical ancestor is an after-thought to account for the name of a tribe, the denomination is fictitious, and the hero takes his name (and existence as well) from the tribe.

   1859, Robert Gordon Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, page 456

4. uncountableusuallyhuman sciencesThe semantic relation of eponyms (names or words derived from the names of persons or other entities).