At 10:04 4/10/96, Alan Bostick wrote:
As an experienced professional in this field, I have learned that where rules of spelling, grammar, vocabulary come from is *usage*. Words become accepted parts of the language because people start to use them. The acceptance of words is recognized by their adoption in to lexicons and dictionaries, but this is description, not prescription.
If you want to be linguistically correct and ensure that 'onyma' prevails over 'nym,' you've got a lot of catching up to do. 'Nym' is is clearly established by usage on the Cypherpunks list, and I expect it's only a matter of time before it starts showing up in print media, if it hasn't already, and get listings in the Jargon File, then dictionaries, etc.
You can't fight usage; it is usage that makes the language as she is spoke what it is.
I agree with you and I'll go further and state that the use of "nym" is due to it being the suffix of all the terms that are lumped into it _AND_ is spoken in them as a separate (and last) syllable. Use of ONYM would not be as obvious since the "o" is _part_ of the prior syllable _not_ the prior syllable (also none of the words use ONYMA so that is also not a good term to the general public <g>). This is a case of using the last syllable of a number of terms/words as a generic term for all of them (or the use of that syllable as a generic suffix to other words to create a new term with the connotation of that suffix's meaning [as in using -ism at the end of other words]).