identity

1 the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; "you can lose your identity when you join the army" [syn: personal identity, individuality]

2 the individual characteristics by which a thing or person is recognized or known; "geneticists only recently discovered the identity of the gene that causes it"; "it was too dark to determine his identity"; "she guessed the identity of his lover"

3 an operator that leaves unchanged the element on which it operates; "the identity under numerical multiplication is 1" [syn: identity element, identity operator]

4 exact sameness; "they shared an identity of interests" [syn: identicalness, indistinguishability]

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Vulgar Latin identitas, ultimately from Classical Latin idem meaning "the same".

Noun

1. The sameness some individuals share to make up the same kind or universal.
2. The difference or character that marks off an individual from the rest of the same kind.
3. A name or persona by which one is known.

   This criminal has taken on several identities

4. Knowledge of who one is.

   I've been through so many changes, I have no sense of identity.

   This nation has a strong identity.

5. Any function which maps all elements of its domain to themselves.
6. An element of an algebraic structure which, when applied to another element under an operation in that structure, yields this, second element.

Derived terms

• additive identity
• multiplicative identity
• left identity
• right identity
• personal identity
• identity theft
• law of identity
• identity card

Related terms

• identic
• identical
• identification
• identify

Translations

• Albanian: identitet
• Bulgarian: идентитет , идентичност , самоличност
• Chinese: 身份 (shēnfèn), 个性 (gèxìng), 特性 (tèxìng)
• Croatian: identitet
• Czech: totožnost , identita
• Danish: en identitet , identiteter p
• Dutch: identiteit
• Estonian: identiteet
• Finnish: henkilöllisyys (1), identiteetti (2), yhtäläisyys (4)
• French: identité
• German: Identität (1,2,3,4)
• Greek: ταυτότητα (1,2,3,4)
• Hebrew: זהות (zehut)
• Hungarian: identitás (3), egységelem (4)
• Italian: identità
• Japanese: 同一性 (dōitsusei)
• Korean: 동일성 (dongilseong) (1), 신원 (sinweon)
• Latin: identitas , identitatis (genitive)
• Norwegian: identitet
• Persian: (barâbari), (hamâni), (šenâsâyi)
• Polish: tożsamość (1,2); identyczność (3,4)
• Portuguese: identidade
• Romanian: identitate
• Russian: тождественность (toždéstvennost’)
• Slovak: identita
• Spanish: identidad
• Swedish: identitet

Mathematics

• Identity (mathematics), an equality that holds regardless of the values of its variables
• Identity function, a function that does not alter its argument
• Identity element, a special element in a set or structure with respect to an operator
• Identity matrix, a square matrix I with ones on the diagonal, zeros elsewhere

Social science and psychology

• Identity (social science), stemming from cognitive theory, sociology, politics, and psychology.
• Cultural identity, a person's self-affiliation (or categorization by others) as a member of a cultural group
• Gender identity, the gender with which a person identifies (or is identified by others)
• Psychological identity, an individual's unique identity that develops relatively late in his life. (see Identity formation)
• Online identity, established and used by computer network users (see also Digital identity in Computer Science)
• National identity, belief in membership of a nation.

In some countries where there is more than one "nation" in the state or identity is otherwise confused, there may be a debate over what the nation's real identity is, see:

• Britishness, Scottish national identity
• Canadian identity, Québécois nation motion

Business

• Accounting identity, a basic accounting relation that must hold by definition
• Corporate identity, the physical manifestation of a business brand
• Identity theft, the deliberate appropriation of someone else's identity (without that person's permission) for criminal purposes

Computer science

• Digital identity, the representation of identity in terms of digital information (see also online identity in social science)
• Federated identity, identity management with defined trust relations between independent principals
• Laws of identityhttp://www.identityblog.com/stories/2004/12/09/thelaws.html, laws that define a unifying identity metasystem
• Identity (object-oriented programming), a property of objects that allows those objects to be distinguished from each other.
• Identity column in SQL Server, a database field whose values uniquely identify a row in the table

Religion

• Christian Identity, a Christian religious movement

Television, film, music and literature

• Identity (novel), by Milan Kundera
• Identity (film), directed by James Mangold and starring John Cusack
• Identity (album), by Zee with Richard Wright and Dave Harris
• Identity (music), a transformation of pitches in music
• Identity (game show), a short lived game show
• "Identity" (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
• Identify (song), a Natalie Imbruglia song

See also

• Secret identity (disambiguation)
• Identity theft
• Identity document
• Identification (disambiguation)
• Biometrics
• Entity

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