'antonomasia' originates from Greek, specifically the word 'antōnomasía' (ἀντονομασία), where 'anti-' meant 'instead' and 'onoma' meant 'name'.

'antonomasia' passed into Late Latin as 'antonomasia', then into French as 'antonomasie', and eventually became the modern English word 'antonomasia'.

Initially, it meant 'a renaming' or 'substitution of a name', but over time it evolved into its current meaning of 'the rhetorical device of replacing a proper name with a descriptive phrase or vice versa'.