International Council of Onomastic Sciences
Organisation for the scientific study of names
The International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS) is an international academic organization of scholars with a special interest in onomastics, the scientific study of names (e.g. place-names, personal names, and proper names of all other kinds). The official languages of ICOS are English, French, and German.
Work of the scholars of ICOS
Members research:
the origin and history of names,
the personal name-systems used by different cultures,
the demographic patterns of names in different societies,
the use and significance of names of characters in literature,
brand-name creation,
many related topics in the naming of persons, places, institutions, works of art, and other miscellaneous objects.
They are also involved in practical projects such as the international standardization of geographical names.
One of the aims of ICOS, unlike many national societies for name-study, is the advancement, representation and co-ordination of name-research on an international level and in an interdisciplinary context.
To achieve this goal, it is committed to the publication of research and the development of research tools. Thus, its members come from diverse disciplines such as linguistics, philology, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, geography and literary research.
This organization replaced the former International Committee of Onomastic Sciences, which was composed exclusively of representatives of member countries and did not welcome individual researchers as this new structure allows.
Onoma
ICOS publishes the annual journal Onoma, which is its official publication.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “International Council of Onomastic Sciences” as organisation for the scientific study of names. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as organisation for the scientific study of names. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6049906. VIAF identifies the subject as 152341930. The Library of Congress control number is nr89016766. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “International Council of Onomastic Sciences” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.