Is there a general word that means follower of religion?
I'm looking for an analog to the words demonym and ethnonym, but that relates to religion/faith instead of geography and ethnicity.
The closest I've found is the word theonym at the Wikipedia page on -onym endings. However, that isn't quite it.
I'd actually move further afield, and use other words.
Adherent (noun): a person who follows or upholds a leader, cause, etc.; supporter; follower. is one that is frequently used in a religious context, especially when you're trying to suggest that you could be talking about someone of any religion (or follower of a faith, principle or cause.)
Words ending "nym" are words that describe types of words. Examples of demonyms are "Briton" or "American". "Demonym" is a recent coinage. It was invented in the 1980s. If you want a word that describes words like "Christian" or "Muslim" you are out of luck. No single word exists.
While we often talk about religions, we don't often talk about the words that name religions, so no single word has been developed for this category of words. Just describe:
We don't need to say "The xxxonym of Islam is Muslim" because we can say:
The word used for a follower of Islam is Muslim.
"Christian", "Muslim" and "Bahá’í" are the words used for followers of Christianity, Islam and the Bahá’í faith, respectively.
Or, for example:
Adherents of the Bahá’í Faith prefer to be known as Bahá’ís not Bahá’ísts.
You can usually refer to such a person as a practitioner.
E.g.
He is a practitioner of Christianity.
or
She is a practitioner of Hinduism.
How about religionym?
I throw this out there as a possible answer, though I think there could be something that better differentiates between name of religion and name of adherent.
I've found it used in some academic publications, such as: Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2001) Discourse and Discrimination. Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. Routledge: London. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=WP2CAgAAQBAJ
It's even defined in Table 2 of: Kader, N. (2016). A Critical Analysis of Anti-Islamisation and Anti-immigration Discourse: The Case of the English Defence League and Britain First. International Journal for Innovation Education and Research, 4(5). Retrieved from http://ijier.net/index.php/ijier/article/view/538
The words demonym and ethnonym are both fairly recent words, but they are based on classical Greek roots. The -onym suffix indicates the name or word for something. Demonym derives from demos, meaning community or region, and ethnonym derives from ethnos, meaning nation or tribe.
There's not a direct correlary to "religion" but the word pístis means faith or belief, so you could coin the term pistonym. Or the Greek word thréskos, which means to be pious or religiously devout, could be used to form threskonym for this purpose.
theist is my best answer for you because I haven't found a religion that doesn't have a belief in at least one god. Which is why atheist is the term for a person without any belief in a religion or specifically a god.
