A Mexican anthropologist spontaneously used this word in a phrase: "suplantación de la identidad";
that would means something like "identity theft". She was speaking spontaneously to me on the sidelines of an INAH conference.
But is this word 'supplantation' correct? It strikes me a dubious. "suplantación de la identidad"
translates as "supplantation of identity". Wouldn't 'counterfeiting of one's identity' be better? or simply "identity theft"?
Best Answer
First, yes, 'supplantation' is a word in English. It's the noun formed from the verb 'to supplant'.
means to supersede or replace, eg, "The omicron variant has currently supplanted others as the most common covid virus".
'Supplantation' is an acceptable English word but it is not very common so it sounds a little strange. As I'm typing this, the word is marked as a misspelling, meaning it is not in the spell check dictionary so it is too rare for that. Many words created by affixes are acceptable, whether they are mentioned in a dictionary or not. But like this one, they may sound strange and 'non-word-like)'.
Also, yes, 'suplantación de identidad' means what is referred to as 'identity theft' in English, whether it's for money or for fraud.
Again, yes, 'supplantation of identity' is just... weird. It sounds like some robot facsimile has killed and replaced the original human but no one knows.
So, in the end, you just want to say 'identity theft', not 'supplantation of identity'.