Anthroponomastics (or anthroponymy), a branch of onomastics, is the study of anthroponyms (<Gk. anthropos, 'man', + onuma, 'name'), the names of human beings.
Anthroponyms often preserve lexical elements that have dropped out of the standard lexicon of a language. For example, the English name Fishburn preserves -burn, from an older bourn, an Old English word meaning "brook", which has dropped out of common standard English usage. Anthroponyms also easily pass from the language of origin into other, often unrelated languages.
In the case of poorly attested languages, anthroponyms are often a primary source for determining the nature and characteristics of a language, though this has many drawbacks compared to more direct evidence of a language's features.
The subdivisions of anthroponymy include:
See also
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