mononym

[mon-uh-nim]

noun

1. the name of a person who has or is known by only one name, usually a given name without a surname.

   Bajans know her as Robyn Fenty, but she is known in the rest of the world by her mononym, Rihanna.

mononym

/ ˈmɒnəʊˌnɪm /

noun

1. a person who is famous enough to be known only by one name, usually the first name

Other Word Forms

• mononymous adjective
• mononymic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of mononym¹

First recorded in 1880–85 as a technical term in the biological and medical sciences; mono- ( def. ) + -onym ( def. )

Word History and Origins

Origin of mononym¹

C20: from _mono- + ( _epo ) _nym

Example Sentences

Increasingly, he found the concept of a mononym enticing.

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While pursuing her art in Europe as a young woman, she shed her full name and adopted the mononym Bettina.

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To distance herself from that perpetration and the identity she had formed from it, Ensler chose to go by the mononym V. As she explains in her new book, “V is my freedom name.”

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“I was named after my dad, Robert James Flynn. My last name was my nickname, which turned into my stage name. I legally became Flynn about six years ago,” he says about his mononym.

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The film brings a more human understanding of a figure so noteworthy he has earned mononym status for the title.

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