What do you think of...

[clarentine]

Eponymic?

Does that say to you, reader, that the person whose name contains an eponymic is related, in some fashion other than blood, to the person whose name he bears?

To follow my earlier example: Abel Johnsha, where John stands in some guardian relationship to Abel other than parentage--does that work for you? If a character was to call infant Abel "Abel Paulson" and was corrected that the child was "Abel Johnsha," would you blink over the character noting the use of the eponymic as stating that John has taken guardianship or responsibility for the infant Abel?

(I still think it unlikely I'm the first person to need to label this relationship, and probably there's some anthro or linguistics major out there laughing at me. If you're laughing, tell me what the right word is!)

Comments

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

Well, eponymous means named for self, or sharing a name with self (like if a band is named Foo and their album is named Foo, that's an aponymous album), so no, if I saw eponymic, it would not make sense to me that that was a word for naming for a foster parent.

[clarentine]

Drat. As I suspected--I got it backward.