eponymous
adjective
Did you know?
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
Pamela McClintock, HollywoodReporter, 12 Oct. 2025
Sha Na Na's appearance at Woodstock jump-started a career that included several albums and their own eponymous variety show in 1977, per NYT.
—Diane J. Cho, PEOPLE, 11 Oct. 2025
Nunes’ struggles to find appropriate support — legally and socially — leading her to create the eponymous NGO to help families facing similar issues while raising trans children.
—Rafa Sales Ross, Variety, 11 Oct. 2025
Yet describing it merely as a luxurious eco-friendly home would be doing a disservice to this soaring construction of steel, stone, wood and glass that was conceived as a family retreat by Mishra and his wife, Divya Bhatt Mishra, who is also the cofounder of his eponymous brand.
—Lily Templeton, Footwear News, 11 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for eponymous
Cite this Entry
“Eponymous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eponymous. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
eponymous
adjective
R. O. Brady
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