Structural and derivational peculiarities of informal place names in the USA

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УДК 8ПЛ1Г373.21

Structural and derivational peculiarities of informal place names in the USA

O.V. Zosimova

Топоніми-прізвиська, або неофіційні («альтернативні») назви географічних об'єктів, належать до особливо цікавих феноменів у сфері власних імен. Актуальність усебічного аналізу цього різновиду прізвиськ визначається їх широким розповсюдженням в англомовних країнах, а також важливою інформативною функцією та етнокультурною цінністю. У статті розглянуто особливості структури та творення неофіційних топонімів США, а саме прізвиськ американських міст. За кількістю складників (повнозначних слів) відповідні оніми поділяються на два основні типи: однокомпонентні (без урахування артиклів) та полікомпонентні.

До чільних способів творення однокомпонентних топонімів- прізвиськ можна віднести штучну деформацію офіційної назви та субституцію її окремих елементів. Великою мірою застосовуються різні види усічення, рідше - словоскладання. Більшість відповідних прізвиськ- композит утворено шляхом поєднання основи town із частиною назви міста. Досить рідко неофіційні топоніми США є результатом виключно процесів онімізації чи трансонімізації. Значно частіше апелятиви входять до прізвиськ-композит, характеризуючи особливості економіки, культури міста, його історію, традиції тощо, чи на основі подібності звучання з певним елементом офіційної назви. У процесі творення американських топонімів-прізвиськ широко застосовується гра слів. Відповідні назви часто мають жартівливий, гумористичний або глузливий характер.

Ключові слова: неофіційний топонім, прізвисько, спосіб творення, усічення, словоскладання.

Топонимы-прозвища, или неофициальные («альтернативные») названия географических объектов, принадлежат к особенно интересным феноменам в сфере имен собственных. Актуальность всестороннего анализа этого вида прозвищ определяется их широким распространением в англоязычных странах, а также важной информативной функцией и этнокультурной ценностью. В статье рассмотрены особенности структуры и образования неофициальных топонимов США, а именно прозвищ американских городов. По количеству компонентов (знаменательных слов) соответствующие онимы делятся на два основных типа: однокомпонентные (не учитывая артиклей) и поликомпонентные.

К базовым способам образования однокомпонентных топонимов- прозвищ можно отнести искусственную деформацию официального названия и субституцию его отдельных элементов. Широко применяются различные виды усечения, реже - словосложение. Большинство прозвищ- композит образовано путем соединения основы town с частью названия города. Достаточно редко неофициальные топонимы США являются результатом исключительно процессов онимизации или трансонимизации. Значительно чаще апеллятивы входят в состав прозвищ-композит, характеризуя особенности экономики, культуры города, его историю, традиции и т.п., или на основе схожести звучания с каким-либо элементом официального наименования. В процессе образования американских топонимов-прозвищ широко применяется игра слов. Названия часто носят юмористический или насмешливый характер.

Ключевые слова: неофициальный топоним, прозвище, способ образования, усечение, словосложение.

Nicknames or informal (alternative) names for geographical objects belong to particularly interesting phenomena in the sphere of proper names. The topicality of a comprehensive analysis of this group of nicknames is determined by their wide spread in English-speaking countries as well as their important informative function and ethnocultural value. The article deals with the peculiarities of the structure and formation of informal place names in the USA, the nicknames of American cities and towns in particular. According to the number of components (notional words) the onyms are divided into two basic types: single-component (excluding the articles) and poly-component ones.

The main ways of formation of single-component city and town nicknames include artificial deformation of the official name and substitution of its certain elements. Different types of clipping are widely used while compounding is employed less frequently. Most compounds in question are made by combining the stem town with some part of the official place name. Quite rarely informal geographical titles in the USA are formed by onymization and transonymization alone. Much more often appellatives become parts of compound nicknames by characterizing the peculiarities of the city economy, culture, history and traditions, etc. or due to being phonetically similar with a certain element of the official name. In the process of American city and town nicknames formation a play on words is widely used. The informal place names in question can be humorous or derogatory.

Key words: informal place name, nickname, way of formation, clipping, compounding. onym nickname significant

Nicknames or informal (alternative) names for geographical objects belong to particularly interesting phenomena in the sphere of proper names. The topicality of in-depth research on this group of nicknames is determined by their wide spread in English-speaking countries as well as their important informative function and ethnocultural value. It should be noted that, in comparison with informal anthroponymy, alternative place names are not thoroughly studied. As a rule, they are just mentioned or briefly characterized within the surveys of nicknames of a certain country or language community (see, e.g., works of O. Leonovich [1, p. 11 - 12], O. Tytarenko [2, p. 9], G. Tomakhin [3, p. 212], etc.). V. Kanna analyzes some U.S. state and city nicknames in the context of the research of “connotative toponyms” (place names) as a particular type of proper names [4, p. 12].

Alternative names for geographical objects are an important part of many English dictionaries of nicknames (see “Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames” [5] and others [6; 7; 8]) whose compilers give information about the origin and meaning of a great variety of “alternate and secondary names, sobriquets and titles” of geographical objects [7]. However, the linguistic nature of informal place names still needs a comprehensive analysis.

The aim of this study is to identify and describe the peculiarities of the structure and formation of single-component city and town nicknames in the USA.

According to the number of components (notional words) the onyms in question are divided into two basic structural types: single-component (excluding the articles) and poly-component ones.

Single-component informal place names are not numerous in the U.S. They are mostly formed by the artificial deformation of the official name and substitution of its certain elements. The process of deformation includes the following subtypes:

1. Initial, or fore-clipping, in which the final part of the official name is retained: Wauwatosa - Tosa. The nickname is often used with the definite article, e.g.: Evansville - The Ville, Flagstaff - The Staff, Williamsburg - The Burg, Pittsburgh - The Burgh.

2. Final, or back clipping, in which the beginning of the official name is retained: Nederland - Ned, Jeffersonville - Jeff. Some spelling changes in such cases can be caused by the peculiarities of the place name pronunciation, e.g., Jacksonville - Jax. The American city and town nicknames formed by final clipping are also often used with the definite article, e.g.: Cleveland - The Cleve, Edgewater - The Edge, Chicago - The Chi (pronounced “shy”) [9].

Clipping can sometimes be combined with affixation. The most productive affix in this case is the diminutive suffix -y (with the necessary changes in spelling): Wilmington - Wilmy, Philadelphia - Philly, Pocatello - Poky, Indianapolis -Indy.

3. Syncope (complex clipping) - a type of shortening in which the middle part of the official name is clipped, e.g.: Evansville - Eville, Valparaiso - Valpo, Sacramento - Sacto, Kalamazoo - Kazoo.

4. Middle clipping, in which the initial and final parts of the official name are clipped and the middle one is retained, e.g.: Northampton - Hamp. This type of clipping is quite characteristic of English word formation (cf. influenza - flu, refrigerator -fridge etc.).

The way of forming the nickname for the city of Albuquerque is more complex and interesting: Albuquerque - Burque. As we can see, this alternative title is formed by clipping and retaining different parts of the official name. Another nickname for this U.S. city is the combination of the letter Q with the definite article: The Q (compare the pronunciation of this letter with the final part of the city name).

If an official city or town name consists of two or more words one of the components (or several ones) can be omitted to form a nickname, e.g.: Fort Collins - The Fort, Colorado Springs - The Springs, El Paso de Robles - Paso. An alternative title can also be a clipped form of one of the official name components, e.g.: Steamboat Springs - The Boat, San Francisco - Frisco.

Clipping is often combined with other types of word-building. In particular, one of the most productive models of American city and town nicknames formation is the combination of a clipped form of the official name with the word town: Indianapolis - Naptown (Nap + town), Annapolis - Naptown, Hopkinsville - Hoptown, Chicago - Chi-Town or Chitown, Milwaukee - Mil-town, Morristown - MoTown. As we can see, the spelling in such cases can be quite different: the nicknames in question are either single words or hyphenated ones. It should also be noted that the component town can be capitalized.

This word-building model is similar to a great number of the U.S. informal city and town nicknames that are made by combining the initial letter of the official geographical name with the stem town, e.g.: A-Town (Atlanta), D-Town (Denver), O-Town (Oakland), P-Town (Paterson), E Town (Elizabethtown), P-Town (Powder Springs), etc. The vivid examples of partial abbreviation (or complex clipping) are the nicknames for Cleveland Heights and Columbus that are made by combining the initial letters of these place names with their other constituent parts - C-Heights and C-Bus respectively.

In general, abbreviations are widely used in American toponymy for postal addresses and airport codes, data processing, civil registrations and many other purposes. For example, the well-known and, in fact, “official” abbreviations for New York City are NYC and NY, for Los Angeles - L.A., etc. Such initial shortenings (initialisms) as GJ (Grand Junction), EP (East Providence), PSL (Port St. Lucie), etc. are less commonly used. Santa Monica and Fort Collins have the nicknames that consist of the combination of two initial letters of each of the official city title components, namely: SaMo and FoCo (Santa Monica, Fort Collins). The second of these two cities has another witty nickname made by abbreviation: FoCoCo (Fort Collins, Colorado, where Colorado is the name of the state).

Due to the fact that many American cities and towns have the same names, initialisms and acronyms are often composed of the initial letters of both the settlement names and the names of the states they are situated in, e.g.: KCK (Kansas City, Kansas, where the final K stands for the State of Kansas) and KCMO (Kansas City, Missouri, where MO - abbreviation of Missouri). Nowadays such abbreviations are often used in website addresses of city councils (municipal governments), e.g.: http://www.kcmo.org, http://www.nola.gov (NOLA - New Orleans, Louisiana), etc.

A quite popular informal place name is the nickname for Atlanta - The A. Another special abbreviation for the name of this city is based on its airport code, namely The ATL.

The initial letters of geographical names can provide a basis for humorous nicknames like A2 or A-squared for Ann Arbor (see, e.g., the city's official web site “www.a2gov.org” [9]). The Chill as the alternative name for Chicago, used particularly by the rap musicians from the area [9], is based on the initial elements of the names of the city and state: Chicago + Illinois). The popularity of this nickname can probably be explained by both the effective and smart use of word-building opportunities and by the fact that the word chill has its own meaning (“a feeling of being cold; an illness caused by being cold and wet; a feeling of fear” [10], etc.).

The U.S. city and town nicknames are often compound words. As it has already been mentioned, a lot of onyms in question are made by combining the stem town with some part of the official place name (Naptown, Mil-town etc.). There are also other similar models of compound nicknames formation in the English language. First of all, many alternative settlement names consist of the traditional constituent town and a word that characterizes the peculiarities of a city or town economy, culture, history, traditions and customs, etc. For example, Dogtown (North Little Rock) is a derogatory nickname whose origin can be either traced back to the early 1900s when, according to legend, stray dogs were used in the feud between the inhabitants of two parts of the town (Little Rock and North Little Rock), or to the 1870s - because of the bad reputation of North Little Rock as “a town of drinkers, gamblers and vagrants” [11]. The nickname Beantown (almost exclusively used by non-Bostonians) refers to the regional dish of baked beans which was “a favourite Boston food back in colonial days” [9]. Whiskeytown, an informal name for Peoria, Illinois, is a reference to the fact that this city was once the largest producer of alcohol in the USA [9]. Cincinnati for many years was known as Porkopolis (pork + o + polis), a name perhaps not much coveted by the residents of the city but justified by its position as the world's major pork processing centre in the 19th century [9]. It is interesting that instead of the stem town its Greek equivalent polis is used. The city of Reading (Pennsylvania) is proud of its baseball team and that's why it gained the nickname Baseballtown [9].

Besides the stem town, the component land can be used in alternative city and town names, e.g.: Aggieland (College Station), where Aggie (from agricultural) is a nickname for a student or graduate of Texas A&M University situated there (this institution used to be an agricultural college) [9]; Lalaland (Los Angeles), where Lala is a reduplication of the initials LA [12]. It should be mentioned that this nickname for Los Angeles became the common noun meaning a place, “remote from reality” [12] or “renowned for its frivolous activity”, and “a state of mind characterized by unrealistic expectations or a lack of seriousness” [13].

American geographical nicknames are often based on the combination of two proper names (or their elements) or a proper name and an appellative. For example, the informal title Chuckvegas (Charleston, Illinois) is made up of the component Chuck (short for Charles) and the stem vegas, a part of another onym (Las Vegas (also informal Vegas), the city known primarily for its numerous casinos and exciting nightlife). Charleston is called Chuckvegas “in reference to the college town nightlife scene of Eastern Illinois University” [9]. Two proper names are the basis of the new nickname for Chicago - Chiraq (Chi (Chicago) + Iraq) that has recently begun gaining popularity around the city due to the high murder rate [9]. The informal place name Angeltown refers to the name of Los Angeles meaning “The Angels” in Spanish [9]. The humorous nickname Sacratomato was made by combining the clipped form of the city name Sacramento and the word tomato (because of the large California tomato industry) [9]. A combination of the final part of the city name Atlanta and the stem hot creates the compound nickname Hotlanta. The capital of Georgia earned this moniker due to its hot weather or its exciting nightlife, or both [9].

Phonetic and graphic form of a city name can also provide a basis for making a nickname that is often a humorous one, e.g.: Ra-Cha-Cha - a nickname for Rochester, New York, Nawlins - New Orleans (because of the traditional, “fabled” way of pronouncing the city name which, however, is mostly not used by the locals nowadays [9]), Shampoo-Banana - a humorous nickname for Champaign-Urbana, the metropolitan area in east-central Illinois [9]. In the process of creating the nickname for Evanston, Illinois, the first part of the word was substituted by the constituent heaven that is similar in pronunciation and, at the same time, semantically alludes to the strong Methodist influence in this city (since its founding) [9]. The whimsical nickname for Telluride, Colorado - To-hell-you-ride - refers to the popular legendary stories of the origin of the town name. According to the official version, Telluride was named “for the gold telluride minerals found in other parts of Colorado” [9]. In contrast to it, one of the local legends says that Telluride is a contraction of “To hell you ride ”, a phrase addressed to people going on horseback to the town situated in a box canyon with jagged peaks on three sides (that travel was naturally very dangerous) [14].

A play on words is employed in the process of formation of the nickname Berzerkeley (for Berkeley, California). It is a good example of the official name modification: berzerk + Berkeley = Berzerkeley. Being phonetically similar, the word berzerk (berserk) [10] substitutes for the initial part of the onym Berkeley in order to indicate the reputation of the city as one of the most politically and socially liberal in the USA (since the 1960s) [9]. Berzerkeley is a nickname used to help capture the oddity that is Berkeley, especially UC Berkeley (the University of California) and its students [15].

Very seldom American city and town nicknames are formed by onymization, i.e. transfer of an appellative to the class of proper names [16, pp. 95 - 96]. The Bubble for Nanuet, The City for San Francisco and New York, The Hub for Boston are the few examples of this way of alternative place name formation. The process of transonymization is even less productive in the sphere of single-component city and town nicknames. The onym Gotham dates back to Medieval England: folk tales of that time tell of a village called Gotham or Gottam (meaning “Goat's Town” in old Anglo- Saxon) whose inhabitants were considered to be simple-minded. As a nickname for New York, Gotham was first used by Washington Irving in his satirical periodical Salmagundi in 1807 [9].

The type of formation of Metropolis (another popular nickname for New York) is arguable. On the one hand, it can be the result of onymization: the common noun metropolis means “a large important city (often the capital city of a country or region)” [10]. However, we should take into consideration the fact that this alternative name was popularized as the location of Superman comics and itself is an allusion to the setting of the 1926 Fritz Lang film Metropolis [9]. So, the formation of this city nickname can also be considered an example of transonymization.

The results of our research enable us to draw some general conclusions. The main ways of formation of single-component city and town nicknames include artificial deformation of the official name and substitution of its certain elements. Different types of clipping (initial (fore-), final (back), complex (syncope) or middle) and abbreviation are widely used while compounding is employed less frequently. Quite rarely informal place names in the USA are formed by onymization and transonymization alone. Much more often appellatives become parts of compound nicknames by characterizing the peculiarities of the city economy, culture, history and traditions, etc. or due to being phonetically similar with a certain element of the official name. In the process of American city and town nicknames formation a play on words is widely used. The informal place names in question can be humorous as well as ironic or derogatory.

The prospects for our further research can be seen in the study of the peculiarities of formation and motivation of poly-component nicknames for the U.S. cities, towns and states that will broaden our knowledge of the geography of this country, its economy, culture, history, traditions and customs as well as distinctive features of American world view as a whole.

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