Onomasticon

Greek onomastikón is the neuter of onomastikós, "of names," from ónoma "name." It was used for a list of proper names and topics. The term appears in Greek scholarship by late antiquity. It named a reference book of names.

The best-known example is Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote an Onomasticon in the 4th century CE. His work listed biblical place names with notes. This fixed the word as a title for name catalogues. The noun became a genre label.

Latin writers adopted the title form as onomasticon. Renaissance scholars used it for collections of names. English took onomasticon in the 16th and 17th centuries as a learned term. It stayed specialized and bookish.

Modern English uses onomasticon for a register of names, especially in classical studies. It also appears in onomastics for name inventories. The sense is stable and precise. The word still is a list of names.