Definition
The use of a wrong or incorrect name for a person in a legal instrument — a pleading, deed, contract, indictment, or other document. Misnomer does not automatically invalidate the instrument or proceeding; the operative question is whether the party intended can be sufficiently identified despite the error in naming.
In pleadings and criminal proceedings, misnomer is raised as a plea or ground for objection by the party who has been incorrectly named, asserting that the proceeding should not continue against them under that name. In contracts and deeds, the general rule is that a mistake in a party's name will not void the instrument if the correct party can be ascertained from the document and surrounding circumstances. The same principle applies to corporations: an agreement made to or with a corporation under a wrong or abbreviated name remains enforceable, with the corporation bringing suit under its proper name while alleging the error.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A mistake in the naming of a person or place; an incorrect or misleading use of a term, even when firmly established — as in calling a common belief a "fact" when it is not, or applying an established label that is technically inaccurate.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The misnaming of a person in a legal instrument; more broadly, any wrong or inapplicable name or title applied to a person or thing. Webster illustrates with Burke's reference to parliamentary "reforms" as a great misnomer, and Whately's observation that "synonym" is itself a misnomer.
The gap between legal and common meaning is significant and directional. In ordinary modern English, misnomer has drifted toward describing any label or term that is misleading or technically imprecise — a usage so broad it encompasses colloquial myth-busting ("it's a misnomer that ..."). In law, misnomer is procedurally specific: it concerns the incorrect naming of a legal party in an instrument, and it carries defined consequences and remedies. A researcher encountering "misnomer" in a legal source should not import the loose rhetorical meaning found in general writing.
Common Confusion
Misnomer is sometimes confused with misdescription, but the two address different errors. Misnomer is an error in a party's name. Misdescription is an error in the description of the subject matter — a property, a chattel, a thing. The distinction matters because courts have treated the two defects differently, applying distinct rules for when an instrument is void versus voidable versus merely correctable. Researchers working in property, contracts, or criminal procedure should attend carefully to which error the source is addressing.
Why It Matters in Research
The procedural consequences of misnomer vary substantially by context and era, and historical sources do not always make clear which context they are addressing. In criminal law, the plea of misnomer was a formal dilatory plea in early common law practice — a defendant could halt a prosecution by objecting to an error in their name in the indictment. Modern procedure has largely displaced this, with courts permitting amendment of indictments or complaints to correct name errors rather than dismissal. A researcher reading an older criminal procedure source that treats misnomer as a potentially fatal defect should not assume that rule survives in the jurisdiction under study.
In civil practice, misnomer doctrine interacts with statutes of limitations in ways that generate significant litigation. When a plaintiff names the wrong defendant, or names a defendant under the wrong name, courts must determine whether amending the pleading to correct the name relates back to the original filing date. Relation-back doctrine — governed by procedural rules in most jurisdictions — is the analytical framework that resolves misnomer problems in modern civil litigation. Historical dictionary entries will not address this because relation-back doctrine developed largely in the twentieth century through codified procedure.
Corpus researchers should also note that misnomer appears in equity as well as law. In equity proceedings involving trusts, corporations, and similar entities, the naming of parties in instruments was analyzed under equitable principles of identification and intention, not purely technical common law rules. Bouvier's treatment of corporate misnomer reflects this equity-adjacent reasoning.
The term also appears in secondary literature and advocacy in its loose rhetorical sense — arguing that a legal label or doctrine is itself a "misnomer." Researchers should flag this usage as argumentative rather than doctrinal.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition: misnomer is a mistake in the name of a person in a legal instrument. Black's first and second editions are nearly identical on this point, offering terse, technical definitions. Anderson echoes them, extending the definition slightly to cover "instruments or documents of any nature" — a useful broadening.
Bouvier provides the most substantively useful entry. He addresses the legal consequence directly: misnomer in a contract does not avoid it if the party can be ascertained, citing early reports, and he gives practical guidance on how a corporation should proceed when its name has been rendered incorrectly. This is the entry most useful to a researcher working in contracts or corporate law.
Burrill's entry is incomplete as preserved, but its etymology note — tracing the word through the French mes (amiss) and nomer (to name) — is characteristic of Burrill's philological approach and can assist researchers working in historical sources where variant spellings appear.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: they do not address the interplay between misnomer and amendment of process, the relation-back problem, or the shift from misnomer as a dilatory plea capable of defeating a proceeding to misnomer as a correctable procedural defect. Their silence on these developments reflects the state of the law at the time of writing, not the current framework.
Jurisdictional Note
Most U.S. jurisdictions now treat misnomer in civil pleadings as correctable by amendment, with the critical question being whether the correction relates back to the original filing for limitations purposes. Federal courts apply Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c); state courts vary. In criminal practice, the weight of authority permits amendment of an indictment or information to correct a name error without requiring dismissal, though some state constitutions impose constraints on amendment of grand jury indictments.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Pleading — Amendment and Relation Back; Names in Legal Instruments; Parties to Actions.