In rhetoric, antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I, or conversely the use of a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea. A frequent instance of antonomasia in the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance was the use of the term "the Philosopher" to refer to Aristotle.
Stylistically, such epithets may be used for elegant variation to reduce repetition of names in phrases. The word comes from the Greek , antonomasia, itself from the verb , antonomazein 'to name differently'.
Antonomasia can also refer to the transformation of a proper name into a common name, carrying certain defining traits. For example, describing someone as an Apollo instead of as a handsome young man.
Archetypal names
The opposite of antonomasia is an archetypal name. One common example in French is the word for fox: the Latin-derived was replaced by , from Renart, the fox hero of the Roman de Renart (originally the German Reinhard).
Examples
Persons
- "El Caudillo" for Francisco Franco
- "El Jefe" for Rafael Trujillo
- "Il Duce" for Benito Mussolini
- "La Divina" for Maria Callas
- "La Stupenda" for Joan Sutherland
- "Mr. Soul" for Sam Cooke
- "Old Blue Eyes" or "The Chairman of the Board" for Frank Sinatra
- "Pelides" or "the son of Peleus" for Achilles and Ozzy Osbourne
- "The Queen of Pop" or "The Material Girl" for Madonna
- "The Little Bohemian Private" for Adolf Hitler before the Machtergreifung
- "The Queen of Soul" for Aretha Franklin
- "The Red Baron" for Manfred von Richthofen
- "The Shah" for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
- "The Stagirite" or "The Philosopher" for Aristotle