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
The brand stopped creating ready-to-wear in 2014, then in 2020 the eponymous designer decided to step away from designing at his lauded brand.
—Kerane Marcellus, Essence, 17 Apr. 2024
His family’s eponymous shipyard, which launched its first wooden boat in 1927, had moved into electric boats by 1955.
—J. George Gorant, Robb Report, 17 Apr. 2024
The makeup Victoria often does her makeup herself, using her eponymous (and excellent) beauty brand, Victoria Beckham Beauty.
—Hannah Coates, Vogue, 17 Apr. 2024
An eponymous album by J.D. Crowe & the New South (1975) was important in reviving interest in bluegrass.
—Paul Grein, Billboard, 16 Apr. 2024
Country duo Big & Rich with their guest Cowboy Troy and Gretchen Wilson topped the bill over Swift.
Swift, promoting her eponymous debut album and the Miami appearance, spoke to the Miami Herald back then.
—Howard Cohen, Miami Herald, 10 Apr. 2024
The eponymous labyrinth of ancient Greek mythology—the one with the ferocious Minotaur in its depths—is, in descriptions by classical authors, pretty obviously a maze.
—Hazlitt, 10 Apr. 2024
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.
Dictionary Entries Near eponymous
Cite this Entry
“Eponymous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eponymous. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
eponymous
adjective
R. O. Brady
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