eponymous

adjective

epon·​y·​mous i-ˈpä-nə-məs 

e-

1

: being the person or thing for whom or which something specified is named : of, relating to, or being an eponym

the eponymous owner of the bookstore

The epic poem's eponymous hero, then an aging warrior, stepped in.

—Sonja Anderson

2

: named for a particular person or thing

the band's eponymous album [=the album titled with the band's name]

an eponymous brand/label

[Simone] Biles performed a vault that was worth eight-tenths of a point less than her eponymous double-flipping skill.

—Thuc Nhi Nguyen

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

… Ramayana, an Indian epic which chronicles, in sixty thousand verses, the adventures of its eponymous hero Rama … —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

Recent Examples on the Web

Designer-darling nail artist Jin Soon Choi topped fingers and toes at Proenza Schouler with a hazy cerulean polish named Sea Clay from her eponymous line. —Arden Fanning Andrews, Vogue, 17 Feb. 2026

In striving to be both a character study of a dissatisfied sommelier and a picaresque tale of ambition in São Paulo’s gentrified districts, director Gabe Klinger fails to land the emotional reality of his eponymous lead character, Isabel (the film‘s co-writer and Brazilian polymath, Marina Person). —Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire, 16 Feb. 2026

Casey Wasserman is selling his eponymous talent agency, per the Wall Street Journal. —Hattie Lindert, Pitchfork, 15 Feb. 2026

Ones like Michael Dell, from the eponymous hardware company, and Laura Alber, CEO of Williams-Sonoma , and David Joyner from CVS Health , where the kind agentic robots replace the unkind robots who tell you which number to press and please don’t forget the #. —Jim Cramer, CNBC, 15 Feb. 2026

Word History

Etymology

see eponym

First Known Use

1846, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for eponymous

• anonymous
• autonomous
• economise
• synonymous

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Medical Definition

eponymous

adjective

epon·​y·​mous i-ˈpän-ə-məs, e- 

: of, relating to, or named after an eponym

those eponymous genetic conditions … such as … Friedreich's ataxia

—R. O. Brady