noun
- a person who studies or is an expert in onomastics (the study of names and their origins)
Usage: scholarly/academic term; rarely used in everyday speech
Examples
- The onomast traced the etymology of surnames across three continents.
- As an onomast, she specialized in the history of place names in medieval Europe.
- The conference brought together onomasts from universities around the world.
- An onomast might spend years researching a single family name's origins.