Antonomasia

In rhetoric, antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I, or conversely the use of a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea. A frequent instance of antonomasia in the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance was the use of the term "the Philosopher" to refer to Aristotle. Stylistically, such epithets may be used for elegant variation to reduce repetition of names in phrases. The word comes from the Greek ἀντονομασία, antonomasia, itself from the verb ἀντονομάζειν, antonomazein 'to name differently'. See "archetypal name" for examples of the opposite kind of antonomasia. One common example in French is the word for fox: the Latin-derived goupil was replaced by renard, from Renart, the fox hero of the Roman de Renart; originally German Reinhard. "El Caudillo" for Francisco Franco "El Jefe" for Rafael Trujillo "Il Duce" for Benito Mussolini "La Divina" for Maria Callas "La Stupenda" for Joan Sutherland "Man of Steel" or simply "Steel" for Joseph Stalin "Mr. Soul" for Sam Cooke "Old Blue Eyes" or "The Chairman of the Board" for Frank Sinatra "Pelides" or "the son of Peleus" for Achilles "Son of Laertes" or "Man of Pain" for Odysseus "The (Great) Bambino" for Babe Ruth "The Bard" for William Shakespeare "The Big Bopper" for Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr "The Boss" for Bruce Springsteen "The Commentator" for Averroes (so named for his commentaries on "The Philosopher" Aristotle's works) "The Don" for Sir Donald Bradman "The Fab Four" for The Beatles "The First Lady of Song" for Ella Fitzgerald "The Führer" for Adolf Hitler "The Genius of the Carpathians" for Nicolae Ceausescu (note that this is only used ironically) "The Gipper" or "The Great Communicator" for Ronald Reagan "The Great Commoner" for Winston Churchill "The Great Emancipator" or "Honest Abe" for Abraham Lincoln "The Great Silent One" for Helmuth von Moltke the Elder "The Greatest" for Muhammad Ali "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business"