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
Julia Teti, Footwear News, 24 Oct. 2025
Kyha Scott of the eponymous brand Kyha debuted her newest bridal collection in Vietnam this October with a number of fully lace dresses—a first for Scott, who often leans more minimalist in her silhouettes.
—Shelby Wax, Vogue, 23 Oct. 2025
Among his many productions fuelled by his passion for cinema are The Dreamers (2009), based on the novel by Gilbert Adair, Week End (2010), inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s eponymous 1967 feature, and Katzelmacher inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1969 film.
—Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 22 Oct. 2025
The project could be the biggest physical change to the White House since the 1940s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the East Wing in 1942, followed by President Harry Truman's adding an eponymous balcony on the South Portico in 1948.
—Christian Orozco, NBC news, 21 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 29 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
eponymous
adjective
R. O. Brady
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