entry
moniker
/ˈmɒnɪkər/Informal name; nickname or alias
From English (uncertain) moniker (nickname).
Word Ancestry
This is one of those words that arrives in the record wearing a fake mustache. In 1849 it turns up as moniker, but no one can quite agree where it came from, and the dictionary trail stops in a fog. One attractive guess links it to monk, since monks and nuns took new names when they entered religious life, and 19th-century tramps even joked about being “in the monkery.” Another old theory, reported by Watkins, reaches toward Old Irish ainm, “name,” while a Victorian writer in 1857 was already comparing the word’s sound to something Egyptian and mysterious. Whatever its true parentage, it settled into English as a sly, portable label — the kind of name you pin on someone the way you’d tag a suitcase and hope the owner sticks around.
The Story
This is one of those words that arrives in the record wearing a fake mustache. In 1849 it turns up as moniker, but no one can quite agree where it came from, and the dictionary trail stops in a fog. One attractive guess links it to monk, since monks and nuns took new names when they entered religious life, and 19th-century tramps even joked about being “in the monkery.” Another old theory, reported by Watkins, reaches toward Old Irish ainm, “name,” while a Victorian writer in 1857 was already comparing the word’s sound to something Egyptian and mysterious. Whatever its true parentage, it settled into English as a sly, portable label — the kind of name you pin on someone the way you’d tag a suitcase and hope the owner sticks around.
Kin & Kindred
From 'moniker'·nickname; informal personal name
Derived Terms
English words from this root