Is there a word for someone with the same name?

Question

If a person shares my name, in Dutch there is the word "naamgenoot", meaning roughly 'member of the same name'.

John A: Hi, my name is "John"
John B: O, then we're insert solution word here!

Similarly,

• 'classmate' is 'klasgenoot' in Dutch
• 'roommate' is 'kamergenoot' in Dutch

I'm pretty sure I cannot call someone with the same name as mine a 'namemate' :)

Edit Because sceptics appear to be frustrated mightily by an apparent lack of research, there was some discussion on this in chat, with no satisfactory conclusion.

According to WP/Merriam Webster namesake appears to be linked to intentional name correspondance (being named after someone). There may be a US/UK English divide there.

"I was named after my grandfather. I am his namesake." - usage per Wikipedia

Also, the introduction seems to hint at much broader meaning:

"Namesake is a term used to characterize a person, place, thing, quality, action, state, or idea that has the same, or a similar, name to another"

Do you know of a better word/phrase to describe this succinctly?

Answer 1

The word namefellow or name-fellow, although rather obscure, does have exactly the meaning you're after, without the connotation of namesake that both people are named after the same person.

In Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) by the poet A.C. Swinburne, the protagonist travels to Brittany where he meets another knight named Tristram:

But by the sea-banks where at morn their foes
Might find them, lay those knightly name-fellows,
One sick with grief of heart and sleepless, one
With heart of hope triumphant as the sun

Answer 2

Namesake has a meaning of "(roughly) the same name"

"We have the same namesake" implies common ancestry in the name to me, for example if you were called "Galileo" and you met someone else in the street with that name then it would make sense if you were both named after the same original person.

I don't think I'd use it for two random strangers unless there was an age difference and you wanted to make a joke about it, but it's the closest English word I'm aware of to what you described.

Answer 3

Homonym from "same name" in Greek is also a possibility.

Answer 4

I reserve namesake for when someone is actually named after me - there are a few babies out there who I can cheerfully call my namesake. When I run into another Kate Gregory online (happens a lot on Twitter) I call them my name-twin. It's a neologism, but everyone who reads it gets it. (Those of you who thought I was the US Admiral, I'm not.)

Answer 5

Sometimes we use the word "namesake" to describe this. If another guy is named "Muhammad" and so am I, then he is my namesake.

But note that "namesake" may also imply that the second person was named after you. i.e He was named in your memory / honour.

Answer 6

Namealike was in use in 2009 and 2011 to refer to people sharing the same name. Apparently googleganger and internet doppelganger were as well.

(On the internet, there seem to be some incorrect references to so-called namealike National Park that should instead refer to Windjana Gorge, Purnululu, etc. National Parks.)

Answer 7

The word isonymous, in addition to other uses, means having the same surname. An isonymous marriage occurs when Jane Smith marries John Smith. The word is quite rare, and so you could likly get away with using it to mean same given name, as in, "Hey, you are John and so am I. We are isonymous."

Answer 8

OALD registers “namesake” with definition, “a person or thing that has the same name as sb / stg else. I found this word in the short story of Somerset Maugham’s, “A Friend in Need.” The word appears in the story that the hero, Edward Hyde Burton, British merchant living in Kobe told to Maugham when they met in a hotel in Yokohama. Burton told Maugham about his namesake:

“There was a fellow here last year, a namesake of mine, who was the best bridge player I ever met. I suppose you never came across him in London. Lenny Burton he called himself."

I remember this word (namesake) from this short story with the most ominous ending switcheroo I've ever read.

Answer 9

People (or things) with the same name are homonymous.

The term applies to people who have the same name, as well as books, films, songs with the same title, etc.

For instance the movie version of a book can share the same title of the original book, in which case they are homonymous.

If they have different titles, then they are heteronymous. And the latter also applies to anything or anyone that goes under different names — all of which are true.

If someone goes under a false name, that false name is a pseudonym.

The same way that a different name is a heteronym.

And the same name (the name itself) is a homonym.

Etc.

Answer 10

I think the main point here is it doesn't translate across culture. Rather than trying to put up some fake mashing of meaning that will never have the same cultural weight, it's better to understand why there is no word for it in native English speaking countries. For some reason, it's not something people care about enough to give a term for it.

Sami People have more than 100 words or more in their language to describe snow as snow is extremely important to them and it matters in the different types of snow, such as packed snow, fluffy snow and on and on. This is/was important to them because their livelihood depended on understanding and describing snow in survival when hunting and walking through it. English does not have these specific names for snow because it's not important enough as it's not always snowing.

So what I'm trying to say is if something is not explicitly defined from another language, it's like a punch line without the punch. It has no weight or real meaning. It's more awkward than anything, like Borat is deliberately awkward in an extreme way, for example.