misname

plural misnames

1. A wrong, unsuitable, misleading, or injurious name or designation; misnomer.

   Like the name Macon Dead, it is a misname imposed by someone with no concern about the consequences.

   1994, Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni ...

   1 more example

   And it was a misname, because the woman who stood before him now in all her naked glory presented a picture beauteous beyond belief—to Vagn, leastways.

   2010, Sandra Hill, A Tale of Two Vikings

present singular third person misnames · participle present misnaming · participle past misnamed · past misnamed

1. transitiveTo call by a wrong name.

   Misnamed (and misgendered) was Patricia Glass Schuman, of Neal-Schuman Publishers.

   1990, Library Journal, page 9

   Synonyms: miscall, misnomer

2. transitiveTo give an unsuitable or injurious name to; name incorrectly.

   Near-synonym: misnomer

   2 more examples

   Elsewhere is pain in looking back on the blotted page misnamed Experience.

   1860 September, J. W. E., “Our Autumnal Haunts in Leicestershire”, in Macphail’s Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal and Literary Review, volume XXX, number CLXXVII, Edinburgh: Myles Macphail, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., published October 1860 (number), 1861, section V (The Bridge across the Soar), page 140

   The Intelligence Office proved to be as much misnamed as those institutions usually are, and varying degrees of unintelligence were shown in the candidates offered for the position of cook at Boxley Hall; […]

   1904, Carolyn Wells, “Servants”, in Patty at Home, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, →OCLC, pages 69–70

   Synonyms: misnomer