Technical name for a new language-based concept
Onamography is a writing technique that involves creatively incorporating proper nouns (company names, celebrities, etc.) in regular English sentences.
A few examples to clarify the concept:
Onnicle 1: The man at the bar acknowledged that he found the job amateurish. Onnicle 2: The SMS said..Bob ill. The rag ate sick shellfish!
The first sentence has ‘Barack Obama’ embedded in it and the second one has Bill Gates. The concept can be extended to include multiple names in a paragraph.
I’ve been trying to find out if there is already a technical name in English to describe it. Onamography is a coined word (Greek origin: onuma --> name, graphe --> writing) as I couldn’t find anything else that comes close to describing the concept.
Any inputs?
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Haha, that's clever name dropping, hidden in plain English sentences.
If it were only for me, I'd be glad to rename the obscure "Onamography" to a much clearer "crypto-namedropping"
nuyen Apr-15-2010
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I'm quite smitten with onamagraphy (I think the name should stick).
I created a couple of my own:
1. It was a drab radiation; farther up, it turned brighter.
2. You get a one dollar bill if you kill a lemur; ray gun not needed
3. Bajas on the sand, and on the hill: eels.
paul May-01-2010
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Where do you people come from? When I was younger we were just into cars and guns and shit
Steve1 May-03-2010
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Steve, you must find it marginally interesting if you're reading it, eh? Incidentally, I'm into cars as well. Not so much guns. Definitely not shit.
plunruh May-03-2010
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Interesting, seems to be a sub-genre of Steganography.
blademonkey May-21-2010
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This seems like fun but I doubt its usefulness in steganography - for one there's no way to reliably locate the hidden information. Not unless you know what you're looking for. That however defeats the entire purpose since you already know what you're trying to find.
One way would be to encode the information of the position of the Onamograph in the first few words of the sentence. For example:
How could you say that? I've been adjusting my priorities to meet your demands. Until death do us part - that's the promise we made when we walked down that aisle, but I'm not a zombie bereft of feelings that you can treat me like this. I want a divorce.
The first two words are "how" and "could". So we consider the letters "h" (the 8th letter) and "c" (the 3rd letter). Hence the first Onamograph start in the 8th word, 3rd letter. of the paragraph. It is "ad - justin - g".
The clue to the second Onamograph begins in the next sentence - "Until death". That's the 21st word, 4th letter. See it? It's "zom - bie ber - eft". The name is Justin Bieber. Now you may kill him.
Aadit M Shah Mar-26-2013
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thanks for information!
jdynqq Jul-09-2021
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thanks for post!
jdynqq Jul-09-2021
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