gerontonym

plural gerontonyms

1. A term, title, or name used for an old person (or set of people).

   When they reach grand-parental age, people become known by a gerontonym, the titles Lake' ('man') or Doh ('woman') before their own name.

   1998, Jérôme Rousseau, Kayan Religion: Ritual Life and Religious Reform in Central Borneo, Brill

   5 more examples

   The Kenyah do not formally recognize any change in the individual's life, other than the acquiring of grandchildren, as a factor in the use of the gerontonym, but most people who are known by gerontonyms are beginning to "retire."

   1981, Patricia Ruth Whittier, Systems of Appellation Among the Kenyah Dayak of Borneo

   The use of the gerontonym is a form of respect, and it supersedes the teknonym or necronym. One does not attain a gerontonym simply by becoming a grandparent : young grandparents are not so designated.

   1983, Sarawak Museum, The Sarawak Museum Journal

   Among the Lepo Tau , the assumption of a gerontonym tends to coincide with a gradual retirement from economic (although not political or ritual) participation (P. Whittier 1981: 140).

   1990, Jérôme Rousseau, Central Borneo: Ethnic Identity and Social Life in a Stratified Society

   1993, Borneo Research Council (Williamsburg, Va.), The Seen and the Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship and Possession in Borneo Lake' is the gerontonym for men of grandparental generation ("doh" : "woman"). La'ing jok was the man's name. While Lake' is a title of respect, there was an element of irony in its use here. 14. Most Kayan men interpreted the ...

   ... this discourse were: 'Austria' (note the metonymic synecdochic totum pro parte), 'Waldheim' (often taken as a pars pro toto for all 'respectable' Austrians), 'the People's Party', 'the Wehrmacht generation' (note the militarising metonymic gerontonym) ...

   2005, Martin Reisigl, Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism, Routledge, →ISBN