What is Onomastic? 

Onomastic is the field of Linguistics responsible for the study of the first names, analyzed in it's different grammatical, etymological, socio-historical, geographic and more, aspects. The first names constitute a subject of interest since ancient times, although the onomastic studies, as a research topic, had started in several countries only in XIX century. The onomastic studies in the country had a closer approach to linguistics in the second half of the XX century, and nowadays several postgraduate programs at Brazilians universities develop research in Onomastics. 

 
Which are the main subareas of Onomastic Studies? 

The Anthroponomastic is responsible of the study of people’s names. They can be separated into several subcategories, such as: first names, last names, nicknames, stage names etc. 

The classic work of José Leite de Vasconcelos (1856-1951), named as Antroponímia Portuguesa (1928), is pioneer in onomastic studies on Portuguese Language. In Brazil, the Dicionário etimológico de nomes e sobrenomes, of Rosário Farâni Mansur Guérios (1907-1987), published in 1949, was one of the first works related to the area, being of great importance to contemporary works. 

The Toponomastic is responsible for the study of place names, such as: public places, cities, states, countries, landforms, planets, etc. 

The research in Toponomastic began in Brazil with the studies of Carlos Drummond (1954 – 1965) about indigenous base names. In 1980, under the orientation of the same author, It was published the PhD thesis A motivação toponímica: princípios teóricos e modelos taxionômicos, of Maria Vicentina de Paula do Amaral Dick, work considered a turning point in the brazillian onomastic studies. Dick, to this day, still the greatest reference for researchers from the area of Toponomastic in the country 

 

Besides the names of people and places, there are also other types of proper names, such as names of public or private social organizations, names of products from human activity, names of individualized animals and names of individualized events, all of them with their subclassifications, which are also studies of Onomastics.