Definition
"Nom" appears in legal sources primarily as a French-derived prefix or standalone abbreviation, not as an independent legal term of art. Its legal significance arises in three distinct contexts:
1. As a French word meaning "name," appearing in compound phrases — most prominently nom de guerre (a fictitious or assumed name) and nom de plume (a pen name or pseudonym adopted by an author) — both of which carry specific legal relevance in areas such as copyright, defamation, and identity.
2. As an archaic abbreviation in criminal law pleading, derived from Latin and Anglo-French practice, appearing in older indictment forms and treatises to indicate the name of a party or accused.
3. In modern informal legal usage, as a clipped form of "nomination," "nominee," or "nominator," appearing in administrative, corporate, and electoral law contexts.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An informal clipping of "nomination," "nominee," or "nominator."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A French word meaning "name," used in compound phrases: nom de guerre (a fictitious name assumed for a period) and nom de plume (a pen name assumed by an author for publication purposes).
The gap between common and legal usage is meaningful. In everyday speech, "nom" is a modern informal clipping with no particular weight. In legal and historical sources, the term derives its significance entirely from the French and Latin traditions of pleading and authorship — particularly as the root of compound phrases that trigger distinct legal questions about identity, attribution, and intellectual property. A researcher encountering "nom" in an older legal text should resist the modern informal reading and look to its French nominal function.
Common Confusion
Nom de guerre and nom de plume are frequently conflated in both common usage and older legal texts, but they are not interchangeable in legal analysis. Nom de plume has specific relevance in copyright law, where the identity of the author under a pseudonym affects duration of rights and registration requirements. Nom de guerre refers more broadly to any assumed name — not limited to authorship — and historically appeared in military, criminal, and identity fraud contexts. Anderson's cross-reference to COPYRIGHT signals this distinction has practical doctrinal weight.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter "nom" primarily in two historical contexts that require different navigational strategies.
First, in copyright materials: Anderson's direct cross-reference to COPYRIGHT under "nom de plume" indicates that pseudonymous authorship was treated as a distinct doctrinal category. Historical sources may use "nom de plume" as a term of art in discussions of authorial identity, anonymous publication, and ownership disputes. A researcher tracing the history of pseudonymous authorship in copyright should use "nom de plume" as a search term alongside PSEUDONYM and COPYRIGHT to capture the full range of treatments.
Second, in criminal pleading: Burrill's citation to Chitty's Criminal Law (1 Chitty's Crim. Law, 478–480, 205, Perkins' ed.) places "nom" in the technical vocabulary of indictment drafting. Older indictments and pleading forms used abbreviated Latin and Anglo-French conventions that are opaque to modern readers. "Nom" in this context likely appears as part of formal allegations concerning the name of the accused — a matter of some procedural importance in historical practice, where misnomer in an indictment could be grounds for challenge. Researchers in historical criminal procedure should be alert to this usage and consult the Chitty reference directly.
The term's brevity and multiplicity of functions make it a poor standalone search term. Researchers will get better results by searching for the compound phrases (nom de plume, nom de guerre) or the fuller Latin form (nomen) depending on the doctrinal context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson and Burrill treat "nom" differently, and the divergence is instructive. Anderson uses it as a cross-reference node — pointing readers to NOMEN, to Nomine, and to COPYRIGHT — suggesting that in American legal usage of the period, "nom" carried no independent doctrinal weight but served as a gateway to related concepts. Burrill's entry, by contrast, anchors the term in criminal pleading practice through the Chitty citation, reflecting the English common law pleading tradition in which the precise form of a party's name in an indictment had procedural consequences.
Neither dictionary treats "nom" as a fully developed entry, which itself signals something: this is a connective term, useful for navigating between substantive concepts rather than as a doctrine in its own right. The historical dictionaries agree, implicitly, that the term's value lies in its compounds and derivatives. What they do not address is the modern corporate and electoral usage of "nom" as a clipping — that layer of meaning is entirely absent from the historical sources and reflects twentieth- and twenty-first-century administrative and informal legal vocabulary.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: COPYRIGHT (pseudonymous authorship); NAMES AND NAMING IN LAW; CRIMINAL PLEADING (historical forms)