Talk:name for

Deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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name for

Not a phrasal verb (not a phrase). Meaning the same as name + after. The "particle" is a preposition which can be fronted. Name in no way acquires a new sense in this. DCDuring TALK 23:07, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

• We also have name after. There's an old joke with many variations, but basically it goes like this: "Did you know the Kennedy Center was named after Kennedy?" "Well of course it was, it couldn't have been named before Kennedy!" The reason we have name for is because it is a variation of name after, the primacy of which was the subject of this Tea room discussion over seven years ago. A later Tea room discussion agrees with you that these are not phrasal verbs, but concludes that these should still be kept in Wiktionary. Also, as I recall, both name for and name after were, at the time, contained in lists of entries that were requested to be made. It seems unwise to maintain these lists if entries made from them are liable to be deleted. In short, there are several historical basis to keep these. bd2412 T 01:20, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Delete, seems pretty straightforward. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:38, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Keep per bd2412.Dmol (talk) 20:56, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I would add that this phrase almost exclusively uses an unusual sense of "for". If I buy groceries, or do most anything else, "for" my grandmother, it means that I'm buying them on her behalf, or for her use, and not in her honor. However, if I name my daughter "for" my grandmother, then I am doing it in her honor. There is a middle case, where, for example, I give $20 to charity "for" my grandmother, in which case I might be doing so in her honor, or I might be doing so on her behalf (because she gave me $20 and asked me to give it to this charity). That can only be determined from context. But naming someone or something "for" someone or something else is automatically understood to be done in honor of the original - a sense that would not be obvious to the non-native English speakers who are so breathtakingly undervalued by this dictionary. bd2412 T 01:33, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Google Books has a single result for "christened for" ("...his uncle"), from 1933. Equinox ◑ 01:37, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Google Books returns many, many more examples for "christened after" in the sense of "named after". I think that by itself shows that "named for" is a bit of a colloquialism. bd2412 T 03:11, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Good point. Keep.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:56, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 12:59, 8 August 2013 (UTC)