Unconventional Anthroponyms: Formation Patterns and Discursive Function continues a series of collective volumes comprising studies on onomastics, edited by Oliviu Felecan with Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Previous titles in this series include Name and Naming: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives (2012) and Onomastics in Contemporary Public Space (2013, co-edited with Alina Bugheşiu).

In contemporary naming practice, one can distinguish two verbal (linguistic) means of nominal referential identification: a “natural” one, which occurs in the process of conventional, official, canonical, standard naming and results in conventional/official/canonical/standard anthroponyms; a “motivated” one, which occurs in the process of unconventional, unofficial, uncanonical, non-standard naming and results in unconventional/unofficial/uncanonical/non-standard anthroponyms.

The significance of an official name is arbitrary, conventional, unmotivated, occasional and circumstantial, as names are not likely to carry any intrinsic meaning; names are given by third parties (parents, godparents, other relatives and so on) with the intention to individualise (to differentiate from other individuals). Any meaning with which a name might be endowed should be credited to the name giver: s/he assigns several potential interpretations to the phonetic form of choice, based on his/her aesthetic and cultural options and other kinds of tastes, which are manifested at a certain time.

Unconventional anthroponyms (nicknames, bynames, user names, pseudonyms, hypocoristics, individual and group appellatives that undergo anthroponymisation) are nominal “derivatives” that result from a name giver’s wish to attach a specifying/defining verbal (linguistic) tag to a certain individual. An unconventional anthroponym is a person’s singular signum, which may convey a practical necessity (to avoid anthroponymic homonymy: the existence of several bearers for a particular name) or the intention to qualify a certain human type (to underline specific difference – in this case, the unconventional anthroponym has an over-individualising role – or, on the contrary, to mark an individual’s belonging to a class, his/her association with other individuals with whom s/he is typologically related – see the case of generic unconventional anthroponyms).