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Definition rotonym [ro-tuh-nim] noun a word, that when all letters are rotated by half of the language's alphabet, becomes another word in its language. Origin: 2007; rot- rot- + -ōnym- -onym

What are 'rotonyms'? While playing with the weak cipher known as ROT13, I decided to check whether any words would ROT13 into other words. I wrote a simple script to cipher a dictionary file, then compared it against itself to look for matches. To my delight, I had found some solid results. Some of the resultant pairs even relate to each other in other ways. I decided this effect was worth naming, and coined 'rotonym' to describe them.

What is ROT13? ROT13 is the process of rotating all the letters in a given text by 13 letters, exactly half of the english language alphabet. It is a simple letter substituion cipher which is an example of a Ceasar cipher, originally developed in ancient Rome. ROT13 is its own inverse, that is, when this process is repeated the original text is restored. Below is a list of letters, with their ROT13 counterparts. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What are known rotonyms?

To the left (if you have javascript enabled) is a listing of found pairs based on the dictionary file I used. I only list from A to N because the rest of the alphabet would produce redundant pairs and is reflected in the Rotonym column. Click any pair of rotonyms in the list below to see the definitions of each pair. Some rotonym entries are slang or abbreviations that might not have official definitions.

'She' likes 'fur'.

The rotonym pair 'gnat tang' is also a Palindrome.

'Terra' is 'Green'.

The rotonym pair 'irk vex' is also a Synonym pair.