The Fusion of Onyms: on the Issue of the Formation of Telescopic Proper Nouns

Abstract

The article deals with proper names formed by means of blending, i.e. merging two or more words, at least one of which, in its turn, is a proper name – an onym. It is stated that words formed in this way are mainly English, but they also occur in Russian, German and French, although to a much lesser extent. All blended onyms can be divided into several groups, of which the most numerous are anthroponyms (baby-names, fused names and / or surnames of married couples, combined names of characters, concocted by fans, etc.) and toponyms. This way of merging proper names is especially popular in the United States – in particular, names for groups of states and border-towns. Despite the predominance of English-language examples in general, there are some blended nicknames in Russian, many of which are facetious, or even derogatory. A relatively small number of blended onyms are names of enterprises and organizations, trademarks, and objects of material culture. We were the first to single out a separate group – names of holidays. The most common is the fusion of clipped stems of one or both words, although there are cases of overlapping and insertion, as well as blends formed of three stems. This paper will be of interest to both lexicologists, since it deals with the issues of word formation and specialists in the field of onomasiology, since the research is focused on proper names.