namesake
Americannoun
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namesakes
plural
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a person or thing named after another or whose name is given to another person or thing.
Little Dora lay asleep in the arms of her namesake, great-aunt Dora.
The memory of Robert and Signe McMichael is honored in their namesake, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
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a person or thing having the same name as another.
The cities of Hyderabad, Pakistan, and Hyderabad, India, are namesakes.
noun
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a person or thing named after another
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a person or thing with the same name as another
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of namesake
First recorded in 1640–50; alteration of name's ( name + 's 1 ) sake 1
Explanation
If your parents named you after your Great Uncle Abner, then you are his namesake. The two of you share a very nice name. Use the noun namesake to describe the recipient of a handed-down name, like Bob Jr., or Ricky Smith III. Less often, the word also means anyone who shares a name with someone else, so you could refer to all the Emmas in your school as namesakes. The first recorded use of the word namesake was in the mid-1600s, and it probably began as the phrase "for the name's sake," before being condensed into a single word.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The German automaker, which houses its namesake brand as well as the Mini and Rolls-Royce marques and a motorcycle business, said Tuesday that overall group sales fell 6.3% in the quarter to 551,072 vehicles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026
At a time when other sitcoms occasionally tackled social issues in “very special” episodes and “The Cosby Show” hewed to its namesake star’s dedication to respectability politics, “A Different World” regularly confronted harder topics.
From Salon ● Sep. 24, 2026
Although Guns N' Roses has been called the "most dangerous band in the world," its reptilian namesake is not dangerous to people.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026
The Bob Hope Humanitarian Award was established in 2002 to honor an individual in the television industry whose humanitarian efforts exemplify those of its namesake and his altruism.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
Thus did Issur Danielovitch become Kirk Douglas; thus did the William Morris Agency rise to prominence under its namesake, the former Zelman Moses.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
Before he was an international sports mogul, he was Enos Stanley Kroenke from rural Missouri with sporting heritage scrawled right on his birth certificate—his namesakes were St. Louis Cardinals legends Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
After the family moved to England in 2010, the boys would often meet their namesakes at Etihad Stadium.
From BBC ● May 29, 2025
Dodgers fans like Weaver with namesakes on the Bronx Bombers are in a bit of a pickle this fall, caught between the team they support and the American League stalwart whose name they share.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2024
Like their mythical namesakes, these pygmy squids are intimately connected with their natural environments in the emerald waters of Okinawa.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 24, 2023
He didn't miss her enough to become obsessed with her name, to date her namesakes over and over and over and over again.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
