eponymous
adjective
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What’s in a name? If the name is eponymous, a name is in the name: an eponymous brand, café, river, or ice cream is named for someone or something. And because English is beastly sometimes, the one lending the name to the brand, café, river, or ice cream can also be described as eponymous. This means that if Noah Webster owns a bookstore called “Webster’s Books,” it’s an eponymous bookstore, and Noah himself is the bookstore’s eponymous owner. Most of the time, though, we see eponymous describing a thing named for a person—for example, an eponymous brand named for a designer, or a band’s eponymous album titled only with the band’s name. The related word eponym is less ambiguous: it refers to the one for whom someone or something is named. At our hypothetical “Webster’s Books,” Noah Webster is the bookstore’s eponym. Appropriately enough, the Greek root of both words is onyma, meaning “name.”
Examples of eponymous in a Sentence
Leila Hadley, Give Me the World, (1958) 1999
"Cool Britannia," which goes back to Ben and Jerry's eponymous ice cream in Spring 1996, met its sell-by-date within weeks …
—Harold Perkin, Times Literary Supplement, 18 Dec. 1998
Karen Hubert Allison, the eponymous (if you count middle names) creator of Hubert's, didn't know she was making dining history …
—Peter Kaminsky, New York Times Book Review, 11 May 1997
Prarthana Prakash, Fortune Europe, 19 Apr. 2024
The Golden Globe winner will voice Knuckles the Echidna in the eponymous miniseries centered around the Sonic the Hedgehog character.
—Brendan Le, Peoplemag, 18 Apr. 2024
See all Example Sentences for eponymous 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'eponymous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Eponymous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eponymous. Accessed 4 May. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
eponymous
adjective
R. O. Brady
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