nomenclator

plural nomenclators

1. An assistant who specializes in providing timely and spatially relevant reminders of the names of persons and other socially important information.

   Pray, do you suppose that those books of names, which your nomenclator can hardly carry or remember, are those of friends ?

   c. 20, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, translated by Aubrey Stewart, On Benefits: Addressed to Aebutius Liberalis, published 1912, page 187

   2 more examples

   If he does not know them, it is deception to pretend that he does, while all the time he has never heard of them until instructed by the nomenclator.

   63 b.c., Marcus Tullius Cicero Pro Lucio Murena: Oratio Ad Iudices, 1956, Page 115

   Daw. I have brought some ladies here to see and know you. My Lady Haughty [as he presents them severally, EPI. kisses them.]—this my Lady Centaure — Mistress Dol Mavis — Mistress Trusty, my Lady Haughty's woman. Where's your husband ? let's see him: can he endure no noise? let me come to him. Mor. What nomenclator is this ! True. Sir John Daw, sir, your wife's servant, this.

   1609, Ben Jonson, Epicoene, act III

2. One who assigns or constructs names for persons or objects or classes thereof, as in a scientific classification system.

   The nomenclator's method is first to look about and see if the place has any natural features to suggest a name—like Rocking Stone Farm or White Birches.

   1969, Reginald Townsend Townsend, “What's in a Name?”, in This, That, and the Other Thing, page 27

3. A document containing such name assignments.

   Synonyms: vocabulary, glossary

4. An early form of substitution cipher.