Onomancy is a divination practice that uses the letters of a name to predict someone’s fate. It has been used in many cultures throughout history, including Greece, Rome, and China. The practice continues today, although some people view it as a game. There is some dispute over the correct spelling of “onomancy.”
Onomancy is a form of divination using the letters of someone’s name. There are many ways a name can be parsed in this system of divination, and many cultures have some form of onomancy. The practice of reading hidden meanings in words and sentences is also sometimes applied to texts such as the Torah by people who believe that secret messages have been incorporated into the language of these texts.
Numerous examples of onomancy can be found in classical writings. The Greeks and Romans, for example, placed great importance on the symbolism of given names, and expectant parents often consulted a prediction authority for feedback on their potential name choices. Some names were seen as inauspicious for a variety of reasons, with diviners considering matters such as date and time of birth, place of birth, and parents’ names in their assessment of potential names.
In the Middle Ages, onomacy was very popular in many parts of Europe. Soothsayers would use someone’s name to chart their fate and future, looking at things like the number of vowels in a name or the meanings revealed when letters were converted to numerical values. The number of letters was also seen as important, and some people clearly came up with very complex codes to rate names with the hope of attracting customers.
Onomancy was not limited to Europe. It was also very popular in Asia and continues to be today. In China, for example, it is believed that the number of strokes used to write your name matters, as are the characters used to write your name. Parents try to choose auspicious names for their children so that they grow up rich, happy, or powerful, and parents who choose poorly will sometimes be criticized for making their children fail.
This form of divination continues to be practiced today in some regions of the world, although people don’t always take it seriously. Many people in the West like to play a game of converting their names to numerical values and looking up the symbolic meaning of those numbers, and some people even change their names in an attempt to create a more pleasing numerical value.
These are some disputes over the spelling of “onomancy”. In Greek, onos means “donkey” and some people have suggested that “onomancy” actually means “divination of the donkey”. The Greek term for name is onoma, so “onomancy” could more properly be “onomamancy” or “onomatomancy”. However, “onomancy” has become the commonly accepted spelling used in most dictionaries.
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