Unnamed

How to spell unnamed

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce unnamed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unnamed mean?

1. adjectiveNot given or identified by a name; left without a name.

Unnamed in a sentence

• The report quoted an unnamed source close to the company.

• They hiked past an unnamed stream that appears on no map.

Where does unnamed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a transparent compound built entirely from native English material. The base is 'name', which descends from the Old English 'nama', a word meaning the term by which a person or thing is known; it belongs to a wide Germanic family that includes the German 'Name' and the Dutch 'naam', and it traces all the way back to the same ancient root that gave Latin 'nomen' and Greek 'onoma'. The negating prefix 'un-' is also thoroughly Old English, meaning simply 'not', and English has long been free to attach it to almost any adjective or participle. Adding the participle ending '-ed' to 'name' gives 'named', and prefixing 'un-' produces 'unnamed', literally 'not named'. The spelling trap lives entirely at the seam: the prefix ends in 'n' and the root begins with 'n', so the word genuinely carries a double 'n' that writers often reduce to one.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• name (from Old English nama)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)