Greek-Latin reminiscences in the ergonymy in Slavic languages

Company names are now being actively studied, as they are able to perform an advertising function. Researchers call the use of foreign language elements one of the important modern trends in the naming of firms. Studies on this topic, which already exist, are based on modern words from the English language; the role of classical languages in the formation of company names does not receive an adequate coverage. The research objective is to identify what the pragmatic possibilities of ancient reminiscences in ergonymy are, and how different Slavic languages use these possibilities. The research material is the array of ergonyms from reference Internet resources of the cities Krakow, Lodz, Lviv, Odessa, Ryazan, Saratov. The author differentiates two blocks of reminiscences: cultural-linguistic and linguistic proper. The first consists of words of Greek and Latin origin in Slavic languages associated in the minds of native speakers with ancient history or mythology; the second consists of untranslated Latin words and phrases that are not included in modern languages. The volume of material that meets the accepted criteria is 663 names. The author also analyzes related phenomena: the use of Greek and Latin morphemes in ergonymy, which are in new languages, and appellatives derived from ancient proper names. In the study, cultural-linguistic reminiscences are more characteristic of the East Slavic area than of the Polish one. Mythonyms predominate; in most cases they are used semantically correctly. The popularity of individual mythonyms (Phoenix, Mercury, Hermes) entails their derivational activity - the creation of complex ergonyms, including appellative and digital components; these motivators are involved in the nomination of a large number of objects. Among non-mythological reminiscences, precedent proper names are used more often than appellatives that name ancient realities. The author considers the array of linguistic proper reminiscences as a field. The periphery consists of morphemes in modern Slavic languages of Greek and Latin origin, which become proper names: radixoids, affixoids, term elements (cosmo, endo, med, etc.). The near-nuclear zone consists of Latin words with roots that are radixoids in modern languages (the lexemes vita, terra, ego are popular). The volume of the nucleus in Polish is wider than in East Slavic languages. Ergonyms are stable expressions (Eureka, In vitro, Carpe diem, etc.), some Latin words (Officina, Gemini, Aurum), and nouns with prepositions. The latter phenomenon is typical only for the Polish area, where the “pro + Latin noun” model is regular. Latin vocabulary is used semantically correctly by nominators, but there are isolated grammatical violations. The author concludes that mass proficiency in classical languages is not typical for East Slavic cultures; therefore, mainly cultural ancient reminiscences are used to increase the status of the nominator and the recipient; for Polish culture, which is strongly influenced by Catholicism, it is more typical to use Latin vocabulary for pragmatic purposes.

Keywords

Authors

References