surnamer
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English
Etymology
Coined by George Puttenham (1529–1590), English literary critic.
Noun
surnamer (plural surnamers)
- (rhetoric, obsolete) The eponym used in antonomasia; a person whose name is used as an exemplar of some quality.
- 1589, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie..., p. 192:
- And if this manner of naming persons or things be not by way of misnaming as before, but by a conuenient difference, and such as is true or esteemed and likely to be true, it is then called not metonimia, but antonomasia, or the Surnamer, (not the misnamer, which might extend to any other thing aswell as to a person) as he that would say: not king Philip of Spaine, but the Westerne king, because his dominion lieth the furdest West of an Christen prince: and the French king the great Vallois, because so is the name of his house, or the Queene of England, The maiden Queene, for that is her hiest peculiar among all the Queenes of the world...
- 1963, Florida State University Studies - Issue 38, page 182:
- Crawford calls upon the 'surnamer' again: "for 'Pan' means Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender and 'Marsias ofspringe' stands for The Faerie Queene."
- 1589, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie..., p. 192: