onomastician

plural onomasticians

1. A person who studies onomastics; one who studies or researches names.

   As an onomastician, I take it to be axiomatic that name choice in a great author’s works is a highly controlled and deliberate act.

   2006, Jeremy Parrott, “‘Change All the Names’: A Samuel Beckett onomasticon”, in il Nome nel testo. Rivista internazionale di onomastica letteraria, →ISSN, page 615

   2 more examples

   The semantics of names vs. the semantics of words has been the most attractive and active field of inquiry in onomastics, investigating a large cultural variety of names and their embeddedness in many different languages. It is not surprising therefore that the onomastician’s closest ally is the lexicologist; the student of names is most easily understood by the student of words.

   1984, W. F. H. Nicolaisen, “What Crisis in Onomastics?”, in Names: A Journal of Onomastics, volume 32, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, page 17

   What is a mere layman doing amongst people talking about such a specialised subject. Shouldn’t the organisers have invited our only onomastician to give this keynote?

   2020, Bojosi Otlhogile, “‘A Name Tells a Story’: Botswana’s Place, Street and Landmark Names – A Layman’s Perspective”, in Botswana Notes and Records, volume 52, →ISSN, →JSTOR, page 138

   Synonyms: onomasiologist, onomast, onomatologist