[idlewords]

"Nominology is my neologism for the study of naming things!"

It's called onomastics, son. Now get off my lawn.

[dreeves]

Delighted that this is one of the first comments! :)

Note the update on the "nominology" article: "As soon as this went to print, Rob Felty (a linguist) informed me that the established term for what I've called nominology is onomastics. Scooped by 295 years!"

And further discussion in the comments: http://messymatters.com/nominology/

[mattcwilson]

Onomastics:

EVOC - R

BREV - Y

GREP - G

GOOG - G

PRON - Y

SPEL - Y

VERB - R

Nominology:

EVOC - Y

BREV - Y

GREP - G

GOOG - G

PRON - G

SPEL - Y

VERB - Y (nominologize?)

Seems like nominology wins on at least a couple nominological categories. :)

[dreeves]

Ha, nice! I mean, "onomastics" really should win simply for already being the established term. But if one were picking the name from scratch then I'd say "nominology" has probably...

    * greater evocativity (at least for us philistines)
    * nearly equal brevity (same number of chars, one more syllable)
    * equal greppability and googlability
    * greater spellability, maybe (again, at least for us philistines)
    * equal pronouncability
    * equal verbability (nominologize/onomasticize, nominological/onomastic, nominologist/onomastician)

Of course "nominology" mixes Greek and Latin roots so that's presumably fingernails on a blackboard for more educated folk than me. Cf http://messymatters.com/nominology/#comment-530036107