A numeronym is a number-based word.
Most commonly a numeronym is a word where the number is used to form an abbreviation (albeit not an acronym or an initialism).
Pronouncing the letters and numbers may sound similar to the full word: "K9" for "canine" (phonetically: "kay" + "nine"), and (in French) "K7" for "cassette" (phonetically: "ka" + "sept").
Alternatively, the letters between the first and last are replaced by a number: the number of letters omitted. An example is "i18n" for "Internationalization".
Less commonly, a numeronym is composed entirely of numbers, such as "212" for "New Yorker", "4-1-1" for "information", "9-1-1" for "help", and "101" for "basic introduction to a subject".
Rarely, all letters after the first are replaced by a number: the number of characters omitted. Possible examples are A9 for "Amazon.com" and A4 for "Apple", although neither company has revealed the derivation of its neuronym.
According to Tex Texin, the first numeronym of the second kind was "S12n", the electronic mail account name given to DEC employee Jan Scherpenhuizen by a system administrator because his surname was too long to be an account name. Colleagues who found Jan's name unpronounceable often referred to him verbally as 'S12n'. The use of such numeronyms became part of the DEC corporate culture, with "i18n" being spawned there in 1985.[1]
Numeronyms in the sense of words composed entirely of numbers date from far earlier than the events at DEC, however, with "7-11" having used its name since 1946 and 10-code having been in use since before World War II.
Moreover, according to Anne H. Soukhanov, editor of the new Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary, a numeronym originally was "a telephone number that spells a word or a name" on a telephone dial, and only later came to be the more general concept of a word some or all of which was composed of digits rather than letters.[2]
The concept of incorporating numbers into words can also be found in Leet, where numbers are frequently substituted for orthographically similar letters (e.g. H4CK3D for HACKED), although other, non-numeric, character substitutions are often made as well.
