Onomancy breaks down in the following way - onos is the Greek word for ass and onoma is the word for names. There is some suggestion that initially Onomancy related to the worship of donkeys. However the sketchy history of Onomancy takes another twist in the 17th century when Onomancie became associated with foretelling the future by names. Whether Onomancy was meant to relate to divination through the study of donkeys and their characteristics that ultimately led to their worship or, from names given by parents or both remains something of a mystery as little information about this divination method exists. However by the l8~ century Onomancy had been replaced by Onomamancy or Onomomancy to identify a methodology that supposedly allowed predictions from the names given children by their parents or that may have been adopted in the absence of parents.
The science of Onomancy if including it within a discipline linked to science would ever be permitted today which is doubtful considering the consternation caused to the scientific community whenever comprehensive systems found in Western or Eastern astrological formats continue to be shunned.
However if it is suggested that the science of Onomancy associated with divination from names possess some credibility in the spiritual environment then it would be remiss not to explore this avenue of thought. The spiritual dimension does attempt to influence the physical dimension in which we live and may therefore influence the choice of names given by parents in order to categorize individuals for a spiritual system that is unrecognizable to those present in the physical dimension. It would be possible to speculate ad nauseam at how anyone a thousand years ago began associating names with divination other than to suggest that a likely reason possibly relates to the same processes that formulated the more common divination methods currently used today except that the science of Onomancy failed to attract sufficient interest to make it endure. In addition Numerology possibly does a better job and
appears more logical in its concept which utilizes the alphabet with the numbers I to 9.
In conclusion the reason divination by Onomancy, onomamancy, onomomancy or whatever anyone chooses to call it is no longer pursued as an effective method with which to offer future forecasts is probably a reflection of the poor accuracy such a method provided. What is certain is that when people discover something that truly offers a credible method of predicting future events they are highly unlikely to forget it and would likely make every effort to ensure that it continues to act as a resource to others in the future. What happened in regard to the science of Onomancy is that it likely failed to produce positive results.