Religionym and confessionym
Religionym (from Latin: religio / religion, and Greek: ὄνομα / name) and confessionym (from Latin: confessio / confession, and Greek: ὄνομα / name) are polysemic terms, and neologisms, that have several distinctive meanings, generally related (from the semantic point of view) to religious (confessional) terminology, but are (in their specific meanings) defined and used differently among scholars. As a consequence of a wide variety of uses, specific meanings of those terms can be mutually distinctive, but also overlapping. Some scholars have used one or the other term as designations for a particular onomastic class that encompasses the proper names of religions and cults (like: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), while others have used the same terms (one or the other) as names for a particular anthroponymic class, encompassing the proper names that designate religious adherents (like: Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims). In scholarly literature, both terms (religionym and confessionym) are sometimes also used in much broader meaning, as designations for all terms that are semantically related to religious (confessional) terminology.In the English-speaking world, lexical corpus that encompasses various words, terms and expressions that are related to the religious sphere of life is most commonly referred to as religious lexis, or religious lexicon. Those linguistic terms cover all of those widest meanings that were occasionally assigned (by some authors) to the terms religionym and confessionym, thus relieving them of such general uses, and consequently allowing the standardization of more specific uses for both of those terms.