Tendencies of creating anglophone ergonyms in modern English-speaking world

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Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University

Tendencies of creating anglophone ergonyms in modern English-speaking world

Gryshkova R.O.

Abstract

onym word english-language

The article is dedicated to clearing out the tendencies in creating Anglophone ergonyms in modern English-Speaking world. “Onym” as a word, word combination or a sentence which serves for identifying a certain object among other objects, its individualization and identification, is under the author's consideration. Ergonyms as the names of companies, banks, factories, plants, educational establishments, cultural objects and sport events in Great Britain, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are researched in this paper in order to describe their structure, functions and influence on the people in the above mentioned countries.

The research findings show that in all these countries most ergonyms are word combinations of toponimical or anthroponimical origin. Toponimical ergonyms denote the place where the object is located and anthroponimical ergonyms are connected with the names of personalities whose names they bare.

The research proves that in Australia and New Zealand ergonyms are closely connected with the British English. People in these countries traditionally call their companies, banks, factories, plants, educational establishments, cultural objects and sport events with English names. Very few proper names reflect the languages of aboriginals or native population.

Tendencies of creating Anglophone ergonyms are represented by the usage of Latin and Greek roots in toponimical ergonyms, borrowings from mass media, reflection of the national identification, traditional giving names of outstanding personalities who served their people to remarkable objects, banks, universities, memorials, theatres, libraries. These are so called anthroponimical ergonyms.

In the future ergonyms to nominate different events, companies or cultural objects will be synchronized with the development of science, politics, IT computer sphere.

Key words: Anglophone ergonym, toponimical, anthroponimical, tendency, English-Speaking world.

Гришкова Р.О.

Тенденції створення англофонних ергонімів у англомовному світі

Анотація

Стаття присвячена результатам дослідження створення англомовних ергонімів у Великій Британії, Сполучених Штатах Америки, Канаді, Австралії, Новій Зеландії. Авторка наводить визначення оніма як слова, словосполучення чи речення, що слугує для вирізнення певного об'єкта з-поміж інших, його індивідуалізації та ідентифікації. Англомовні ергоніми як назви компаній, підприємств, банків, закладів освіти, культурних та спортивних об'єктів заслуговують на особливу увагу, оскільки виконують такі функції: номінативну, інформативну, ідентифікаційну, естетичну, меморіальну, рекламну, довідкову, пізнавальну, просвітницьку та ін.

Результати дослідження засвідчують, що англомовні ергоніми є в основному двох- чи більше компонентними словосполученнями «відтопонімного» чи «відантропонімного» походження. «Відтопонімні» пов'язані з місцем знаходження об'єкта, тоді як «відантропонімні» - це ті, що названі ім'ям засновника, володаря компанії, банка чи підприємства або відображають шанобливе ставлення співвітчизників до видатних особистостей, людей, які прислужилися власному народові.

Ергоніми в Австралії та Новій Зеландії зберігають англомовне походження, що демонструє їхню залежність від Великої Британії, домініонами якої вони є. Не виявлено власних назв місцевого походження за виключенням національного танця, який народність маорі виконує перед початком видатних подій у Новій Зеландії.

Виявлені тенденції створення англомовних ергонімів пов'язані з використанням латинських та давньогрецьких основ, традиційних назв об'єктів відтопонімними чи відантропонімними іменами, впливом засобів масової інформації та політичних подій на найменування об'єктів.

Ключові слова: англомовні відтопонімні, відантропонімні ергоніми, тенденція, англомовний світ.

Introduction

The English-speaking world which comprises such countries as Great Britain, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the South-African Republic and many other not so big countries is constantly developing as the English language has become the language of international communication.

The total number of languages in the world is large: between 4,000 and 4,500. There are only five languages that can claim a very large number of speakers, namely, Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu and Russian (in that order). Of these languages, only English can claim to be a more or less universal language [10].

More than 600 million people speak it as their first or second language and can therefore be “reached” through English. What is more important this number includes most of the world leaders. Our Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky speaks English rather fluently. It helps him in communication with the world leaders face to face in order to solve numerous problems provoked by the full-scale invasion of the enemy's troops on Ukrainian territory. English is by far the most useful language from the stand-point of business, politics and science. In every field of knowledge more is written in English than in any other language. More television programs use it. There are English-language newspapers in many important non-English-speaking cities. If we are going to have a world language it will almost certainly be English.

Every language is a reflection of the peculiarities of the world comprehension by its speakers. The development of the society is represented in the proper names which can be considered as the source of our knowledge about the past, a very specific memory about the events which took place long ago.

A great number of linguistic phenomena contain the term “onym' in their names: synonym, antonym, chromonym, toponym, anthroponym, teonym, ergonym etc. Researches dedicated to the study of all sorts of “onyms” have become very popular because of the rapid increase of new categories of names and their impact on the social and cultural life of people. D. Ganych and O. Oliynyk in their “Dictionary of Linguistic Terminology” define onym as “a word, word combination or a sentence which serves for identifying a certain object among other objects, its individualization and identification. A proper name” [9, р. 287].

“Onym” is the central notion of “onomastics” - (from Greek onomastikos - the one which refers to giving names) [11, p. 517] - a branch of linguistics which studies the development, functioning and spread of proper names. In this work we are going to research ergonyms as a part of onomastics. Ergonyms are the names of companies, banks, factories, plants, educational establishments, cultural objects and sport events, shops etc. They function in a certain environment and reflect people's attitude towards their social and cultural surrounding. We have already researched ergonyms in Canada. The results of our work were published in this journal in 2022. Here we are going to research ergonyms in Australia and New Zealand and clear out the tendencies of creating Anglophone ergonyms in modern English-speaking world. According to New Webster's Dictionary, “Tendency is the quality of tending towards something or of tending to do something” [11, p. 1018]. So we are going to find the regularity of the usage of Anglophone ergonyms in the names of educational establishments, banks, sport and cultural events.

Analysis of relevant researches

European researches Richards J.C., Piatt J., Hebloom P. were the first to use the term “ergonym”. Later it was introduced in science circulation and used by Americans Breal M., Sjoblom P., Montgomery K. In Ukraine ergonyms were studied by A. Bespalova (on the materials of the companies' names), D. Buchko and N. Tkachova published a “Dictionary of Ukrainian onomastic terminology” [1], where the definition of ergonyms is given. O. Karpenko researched the ergonyms' structural types [3, 4], N. Kutuza - ergonyms as elements of an advertisement discourse [5, 6], T. Davydova - “speaking names” in English tales and folklore [2], etc.

Most of the above mentioned linguists devoted their findings to Ukrainian ergonyms, and very few - to Anglophone ones (A. Bespalova, T. Davydova). Their researches of Anglophone ergonyms were based on the proper names spread in Great Britain or the United States of America. They appreciated the role of ergonyms in social and cultural space of these countries having analyzed their structural, semantic and functional peculiarities. In this article we also used the materials from the theses of A. Pidvirna devoted to the research of structural and semantic peculiarities of ergonyms as markers of Anglophone sociocultural surrounding [7]. Generally in Ukraine there are not so many scientific papers concerning linguistic phenomena not only in the USA, Great Britain or Canada but in the English-speaking world in general. That is why our research is devoted to structure, meanings and functions of Anglophone ergonyms in the English-speaking world. Having analyzed a certain amount of Anglophone ergonyms in each officially English-speaking country we plan to clear out the tendencies of creating Anglophone ergonyms in the English-speaking world.

The aim of the study is: to nominate Anglophone ergonyms in Australia and New Zealand as parts of the English-speaking world, analyze their linguistic (structural, semantic, functional) and cultural characteristics, and to define the tendencies of creating Anglophone ergonyms in modern Englishspeaking world.

The tasks of the research are:

to generalize Anglophone ergonyms in Great Britain, the USA and Canada in order to define their common features and differences;

to characterize Anglophone ergonyms in Australia and New Zealand in order to research their specifics in comparison with proper names of universities, sports, cultural life in other Englishspeaking countries;

to clear out the tendencies in creatingAnglophone ergonyms in modern English-speaking world.

To solve these tasks such sources of information were used: historical reviews of the country, guide books for visitors, touring guides, reference books, dictionaries, advertizing materials, the Internet resources. For forecasting the future creation of Anglophone ergonyms in the countries mentioned above it is necessary to pay more attention to Latin and ancient Greek because most of the newly formed lexical units have Latin or Greek roots.

Methods of research

To carry out the tasks the following methods of research were used: analysis of scientific publications on the subject of the research in order to clear out the level of the problem's work out; content-analysis of authentic materials to form the massive of Anglophone ergonyms to be studied; descriptive method for characteristics of structural and semantic meanings of ergonyms; comparative technology for comparing sources of creating ergonyms in different countries; statistics - for generalization of the research's results.

Research findings

Ergonym is a means of socio and cultural space, a part of the language surrounding of a certain territory within which its communicative realization is taking place. Ergonym is a product of the people consciousness which reflects all sides of the spiritual and material life of each social community [10].

Language as a social phenomenon, functions in a certain society which influences its peculiarities. According to the changes in the composition of the population, in economy, social relationships, political and cultural life the linguistic characteristics of the language spoken in the country also change. Both British and American variants of the English language were influenced by other languages native speakers of which moved to Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. But the main peculiarity of the English language lies in the fact that it is able to incorporate lexical units borrowed from other languages to its basic lexicon without any significant changes in its own language corpus.

Nowadays there are more than half a million words in the English language, it is the most highly developed lingua in the world (to compare with the Ukrainian language which has only 256 thousand words). Classical British English is greatly influenced by its American variant of the English language especially in the youth subculture, in writing emails and communication via the Internet.

Having taken information from the researches devoted to ergonyms in Great Britain, the USA and Canada we concentrated our attention on ergonyms in Australia and New Zealand in such aspects: education, financial system, sport and cultural events as they reflect the most significant spheres of life.

Research of ergonyms functioning in the British sociocultural space allows to summarize that such a surrounding has formed and is functioning under the influence of all spheres of social life in the country as well as the development of industry, business, culture, education and mass media. The roots of the ergonyms in Great Britain come back to the geographical position of the country, its long history and people's life styles. As a result of the analysis of the historical events the conclusion was made concerning the influence of the monarchy, church and moving people from former British colonies to Great Britain on forming the corpus of Anglophone ergonyms.

The information borrowed from the researches of other scholars shows that out of 75 analyzed British ergonyms 84% are word combinations from which 70% are nouns (The Bank of England, The Confederation of British Industry - CBI, ), 30% are adjectives where the first part is represented by the proper name or an anthroponym and the second part defines the kind of activity of an enterprise or an office, bank, museum, gallery, shop, etc. (The Royal Opera, National Film Theatre, The British Museum,). Among ergonyms-nouns 27% of are of anthroponymical origin (Shakespeare's Birthplace, Fitzwilliam College, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Madam Tussaud's Museum, St Paul's Cathedral) and 14% - of toponymical origin (London Eye, The Millennium Dome at Greenwich, Westminster Abbey). 16% are regular lexemes (Oxford, Cambridge, Waterloo, Heathrow, Luton). Semantically most ergonyms are connected with the name of a founder or with the place of its location [7].

In American variant of the English language there are lots of words not only of Ancient Greek (democracy, theory, euphoria, athlete) or Latin origin (scholar, scholarship, architecture, cholera) but also from Spanish (guerrilla, mosquito, cargo, junta), Portugal (banana, molasses), Italian (piano, motto, fiasco, pizza, umbrella), Arab (zero,algebra, sugar, coffee, assassin, magazine) Persian (tulip, orange, caravan, bazaar), Turkish (kiosk, caftan) and other languages. People who came from Africa brought their words yam, juke, tote, gumbo, jambalaya, goober. People of Chinese origin use their words for traditional food names: chop suey, dim sum, won ton, kowtow and as ergomyms for giving names to Chinese restaurants: “Yam&Chicken”, “Jambalaya Food”. Words of the German origin though they are rather difficult for pronunciation are used for food: delicatessen, frankfurter, hamburger, pretzel, wiener. The native population of America also donated their words to modern English: moccasin, squash, skunk, pow-wow [10].

Many enterprises, banks, plants and factories in the USA bare the names of the founders of industrial giants J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, James Duke, Philipp Armour, James J. Hill, J. Ford who “were once called the Captains of Industry, a term of both respect and admiration for the rich abundance created by the industrialization of America” (Krall, Thomas 162).

Ergonyms to define different objects in America are often connected with the names of personalities who made a great contribution in the development of the country: J.F. Kennedy Airport, George Washington monument, Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Centre etc.

Having analyzed a considerable amount of American ergonyms (75 positions) a conclusion can be made that 94,7% of them are word combinations (The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Chase Manhatten Bank, General Electric Company), out of which 21% are noun toponyns (New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and 28% - anthroponyns (LincolnMemorial, Guggenheim Museum, Ford Motor Company) [7].

After the analysis of the structure and meaning of 54 Anglophone ergonyms in Canada we came to the conclusion that most of them (99%) are two- or many component word combinations containing the word “Canada”, or ''National” that is, have names connected with the name of the country itself: it is symbolic as demonstrates how Canadians love their home land (Canadian Pacific Railway, National Hockey League, Canadian Forest Service, Canadian Museum of Civilization, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian National railway and communications company, Wood Buffalo National Park). 91% of ergonyms reflect the geographical position of the object, starting with toponimical names (Alberta University of the Arts, University of Manitoba, University of New Brunswick, Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Montreal Canadians, Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club). 9% of Anglophone ergonyms in Canada are of anthroponimical origin (Emily Carr University of Art and Design, McGill University and Bishop's University), i.e. they contain the family name of their founders or owners. In such a way Canadians show their respect to the people who served their country [10].

All functions of ergonyms are represented in the names of Canadian universities, museums, sport events, theatres, festivals: nominative, informative, aesthetic, memorial, reference, cognitive, identifying, advertising. Anglophone ergonyms in the country serve as real markers of linguistic and cultural space in Canada.

The analysis of Anglophone ergonyms in Australia shows that in the names of universities toponimical and anthroponimical proper names prevail. Out of 47 Australian universities 18 are of toponimical origin (Australian National university, University of Canberra, University of New England, University of New South Wales, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Queensland University of Technology), 16 are of anthroponimical origin (Charles Stuart University, Macquarie University, Charles Darwin University, Griffith University, James Cook University, Carnegie Mellon University), the others have combined names [12].

As for entertainment, sport and cultural life in Australia it is necessary to mark that in the names of sport training establishments, stadiums toponimical (Australian Institute of Sport, Victorian Institute of Sport, Queensland Academy of Sport, West Australian Institute of Sport, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Sydney Olympic Stadium, Adelaide Oval Brisbane Cricket Ground) proper names are used [16].

Out of 30 theatres and cinemas in Australia 19 are of toponimical origin: Sydney Opera House, Capital Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Southbank Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Brisbane Powerhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Canberra Theatre Centre - to name a few [19]. They all demonstrate how close Australian cultural centers are connected with the places of their location. What seems rather strange is the fact that there are no ergonyms where the proper names of aboriginals are used as if there were no people on this continent when Europeans came there.

In New Zealand the situation is different. The All Black traditionally perform a haka, a Maori challenge, as the start of international matches. Universities in New Zealand being of toponimical origin in some cases bare the names connected with the native population of the country: University of Waikato, Massey University, University of Otago. Located in Palmerton North Massey University is the only educational establishment offering programs in aviation, veterinary medicine and nanoscience. Other universities are also of toponimical origin: the University of Auckland, Victoria University in Wellington and only one Lincoln University is of anthroponimical origin. The number of students at the universities varies from 17300 (University of Canterbury) to 42760 (University of Auckland) [13].

Cultural life in New Zealand is represented by numerous theatres, cinemas and festivals the names of which are proportionally of toponimical (Bunkhouse Theatre, Shoreline Cinema, Flordland Cinema) and anthroponimical origin: Dorothy Brouns Cinema, Ruby's Cinema, Alice Cinemateque, Wellington State Theater, Geraldine Cinema [18].

Kinds of sport which came from Britain are rather popular in New Zealand: cricket, basketball, rugby. Besides water sports are highly developed: surfing, yachting, swimming.

Conclusions and prospects for further research

To clear out the tendencies in creating Anglophone ergonyms in the English-speaking countries a big massive of the names of universities, sport buildings, theatres and cinemas in Australia and New Zealand was analyzed in addition to the information concerning Great Britain and the USA borrowed from the researches of other scholars. The situation with ergonyms in Canada is the result of our personal research published in your journal in 2022.

Having analyzed all the materials we came to the conclusion that tendencies of creating Anglophone ergonyms are represented by:

the usage of Latin and Greek roots in toponimical ergonyms as well as the words American, Australian, British, Canadian, National which can be regarded as reflection of the national identification;

traditional giving names of outstanding personalities who served their people to remarkable objects, banks, universities, memorials, theatres, libraries. These are so called anthroponimical ergonyms;

in most cases Anglophone ergonyms in the English-speaking countries are two- or more compound word combinations with very few lexemes of the very old historical origin;

mass media, political events and constantly changing international situation also greatly influence the creation of Anglophone ergonyms especially in the war time (the names of weapons, tanks, planes and companies which produce them).

In the future ergonyms to nominate different events, companies or cultural objects will be synchronized with the development of science, politics, IT computer sphere.

Besides it should be noticed that appearance of new projects in space exploration, biology, medicine and other sciences will demand new names. Take for example Elon Musk's projects: SpaceX, Hyperloop, Falcon, Neuralink, and a great number of these innovations will have an Anglophone name as their authors will most probably be Englishmen or Americans.

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