In the World of Nym-words

 Ярославский государственный университет им. П.Г.Демидова

Городской центр развития образования

Муниципальное общеобразовательное учреждение

«Гимназия № 3» г. Ярославля

ГОРОДСКАЯНАУЧНО-ПРАКТИЧЕСКАЯКОНФЕРЕНЦИЯ ШКОЛЬНИКОВ

НА ИНОСТРАННЫХ ЯЗЫКАХ  «ШАГИ В НАУКУ - 2019»

IN THE WORD OF –(O)NYM WORDS

Автор: Дзугкоева Евгения Витальевна,

ученица 11Б класса

 МОУ «Средняя школа №88»

Ярославль

Руководитель: Кузнецова Галина Генриховна,

учитель английского языка высшей категории

МОУ «Средняя школа №88»

Ярославль

Ярославль, 2019

Introduction

Last year I came across a great number of terms with the "-(o)nym" root. I found out that they belong to different sciences, such as physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and others. Of course, those concerning linguistics interested me most of all. There was a great number, a flood of them even in linguistics, so I decided to pick out the most exiting ones. Finally, I stopped at -(o)nym linguistic phenomena, the names of which were coined by English-speaking people. That means that they invented these terms, pointed out their features and started to popularize them. More than that, these terms became popular in the 20th century.

The aim of my work is: to learn about the -(o)nym linguistic phenomena coined by English-speaking people in the 20th century.

To achieve this aim I have set the following tasks:

• to learn terminology and definitions
• to find examples of  these phenomena in fiction and internet resources
• to analyze them and their functions

Backronym

A backronym or bacronym is a reverse acronym. It is made by creating a new phrase to fit an already-existing word, name or acronym. The term ‘backronym’ is a blend of two words ‘backward’ and ‘acronym’. It is also known as ‘reverse acronymy’. The term was created by Meredith G. Williams from Maryland, USA. The first backronyms described by her were GEORGE (Georgetown Environmentalists Organization against Rats, Garbage and Emission) and NOISE (Neighbors Opposed to Irritating Sound Emissions). This term was included into Paul Dickson’s book Family words in 1998 which contains words coined by particular individuals.

Backronyms are invented with either serious or humorous goals. Let us look at some examples: GOD – Guaranteed Overnight Delivery

SAD –Seasonal Affective Disorder

MADD – Mothers Against Drunk Driving

GROSS – Get Rid of Slimy girlS

Just imagine that you got an invitation to a small party and an invitation card has an inscription: GOLF. Does it mean that the guests are supposed to play golf? Of course, not. GOLF means Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden, so it is a party only for men.

Or you can hear from somebody: “He is a MARINE type.” When you hear a ‘marine’ you picture a strong navy man. But MARINE can also be a backronym meaning “Muscles Are Required Intelligence Not Essential”. This phrase is surely for people of unqualified, manual work. You can easily compare it with the Russian phrase “Сила есть – ума не надо“.

“Do you know the Bible?” This question doesn’t mean that a person asks you about the knowledge of prayers or Christ’s life or the history of Christianity. This question is quite common among flying instructors. BIBLE means Basic Instructions before Leaving the Earth.

APGAR is a surname. Virginia Apgar (1909 – 1974) is a US anesthesiologist, who developed a method for evaluating the physical condition of a newborn infant. Now the term APGAR score is made a backronym by neonatologists describing such vital physical characteristics as Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity and Respiration.

AMBER Alert - this way of distributing messages about missing children was initially named for Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996. Now it is a backronym for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response”.

Fans of Arthur Conan Doyle organized a society and named it SHERLOCK which is a backronym reading as Sherlock Holmes Enthusiastic Readers’ League of Criminal Knowledge

There is a number of joking acronyms as well:

FIAT (a famous Italian car) – Fix It Again Tomorrow. It surely means that cars of this brand get out of order very often.

DELTA (air company) – Doesn’t Ever Leave the Airport. It means that people don’t have much trust into planes of this air company.

We have also found some false backronyms that are not backronyms at all:

The well-known distress signal SOS is often thought to stand for the phrase ‘Save Our Ship’ or ‘Save Our Souls’. In fact, it is the simplest Morse code representation of three dots, three dashes, three dots which are sent without any pauses between characters.

WIKI – is derived from a Hawaiian word wiki-wiki meaning ‘fast’ but a lot people around the world consider it to be an acronym for ‘What I Know Is’.

ADIDAS – is the brand name of a company producing sportswear. The company got its name after its founder Adolf Dassler whose short name was ‘Adi’ (Adi+Das).  But many people wrongly believe that ADIDAS means All Day I Dream about Sports.

Retronym

A ‘retronym’ is a newer name for an already existing thing that differentiates the original version from a more recent one. This word is created to differentiate between the two.  A retronym is a term composed of combining ‘retro’(meaning ‘old’) and –(o)nym (meaning ‘a name’). It was coined by Frank Mankiewich, an American journalist, the President of National Public Radio and was popularized by William Safire, an American author, columnist, journalist and a presidential speechwriter in 1980 in the New York Times Magazine.

The main reason for appearing retronyms in any language is the inevitable pace of life, technological progress and scientific advances, inventing new things, gadgets, devices and machines, new ways of doing something.

For example, many people enjoyed playing the guitar, or listening to guitar music. The 20th century brought about an electric guitar which became popular rather quickly.  Thus arose the question about naming both types of this musical instrument. Those who started playing the newer instrument claimed that they play the guitar and those who continued playing the original version of the instrument should be named old-school or retro guitar players. However, nobody wanted to be old-fashioned, so the newer variant of this musical instrument started to be named ‘a guitar’, and an original version of this musical instrument was named ‘an acoustic’ guitar.

Before the publication of recorded music all music was live music; now we have two words ‘music’ and ‘live music’. Before the advent of computer discs black spinning platters were called ‘records’, later they were named ‘vinyl disks’. Before canned food was widely available ‘corn on the cob’ was simply ‘corn’. Now we have ‘corn on the cob’ and ‘corn’.

More often there are two- word chains, sometimes there are three or even four words in it:

Ordinary bicycle – safety bicycle

Quill pen – penholder - fountain-pen –ballpoint pen

Pocket watch- wrist watch – analog watch - digital watch

You can also find one and the same word in different chains of retronyms:

Black-and-white TV – colour TV

Terrestrial TV – cable TV – satellite TV

Analog TV – digital TV

There are two ways of forming retronyms in English: noun +noun and adjective +noun

Retronymy affects many spheres of life such as sport, food and catering, house and gardening, gadgets and machines, music and arts and even language and people’s relationships.

Aptronym

An aptronym is a person's name that amusingly corresponds his/her occupation or hobby. It was coined by an American newspaper columnist Franklin Pierce Adams in the 1930s to emphasize ‘apt’ (appropriate, fit). Aptronyms may be called ‘aptonyms’ or ‘euonyms’ by other writers. There are also other terms for this linguistic phenomenon. Herb Caen, a columnist from San Francisco used the term ‘namephreaks’. Washington Post columnist Bob Leveley prefers the term PFLNs, or Perfect Fit Last Names. The most recent term is ‘nominative determinism’; itdeals with the theory that a person’s name can play a significant role in determining his/her job, profession and even character. This idea was extremely popular in ancient times.

The classic example of an aptronym is probably William Wordsworth – an English romantic poet, who wanted to relate “situations from common life” in “language really used by men”. Another great example is a famous sprinter who is regarded as the world fastest man - Usain "Lightning" Bolt. He commented his triumph in the 2002 World Championships as “I became the Lightning Bolt”.

Here are a few more examples:

• Billy Drummond – American jazz drummer
• Scott Speed – American racing car driver
• Bob Rock – a rock music producer
• Lance Bass – a British bass singer in the rock group Camel
• Jack Armstrong – a baseball pitcher
• George de Forest Bush - an American painter who worked with camouflage
• William Headline – bureau chief of CNN
• Amy Freeze – a meteorologist
• Go Seigen–Chinese-born Japanese Go player, widely considered the greatest Go player of the 20th century

Sometimes corresponding names and occupations make humorous or ironic pairs. They were called inaptronyms by Gene Weingarten, a humour columnist of Washington Post.

For example: John Balance – died after losing balance and falling down.

Larry Playfair – NHL player notorious for his fighting and aggressive behaviuor during the matches.

Frank Beard – the only beardless member of ZZ Top group.

Many of today’s surnames have a historical link with trades and occupations. In earlier centuries it was easy to define the trade or occupation of a person’s ancestors.  So Margaret Thatcher’s ancestors surely thatched the roofs, John Smith’s – worked in a forge, and Mr.  Miller’s - worked as millers. You can clearly trace the jobs and occupations of the Backers, the Butchers, the Archers, the Belles, the Smokers, the Carpenters and the Brickers.

Oronym

An oronym is a word or a phrase that sounds very much as another word, a phrase or a sentence often as a result of sounds running together. It was coined by Gyles Brandreth, a British writer, broadcaster and actor and included into his book The Joy of Lex in 1980.

And, of course, the most well-known example: I scream for ice-cream. Oronyms are often a source of humour.

One form of oronym is a mondegreen. A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song. It is a kind of cognitive dissonance. The listener finds it psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song/poem and not to make out the words.  So, he/she substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. 

An American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term “mondegreen” in 1954. She wrote an essay about how as a girl she had misheard the lyric "...and laid him on the green" in an old Scottish ballad as "...and Lady Mondegreen".

Mondergreens can happen both in your native language and while learning a foreign one.   Some of them happen due to pronunciation problems of the speaker or singer. In a native language a mondegreen happens mainly with children due to the lack of background knowledge. In a foreign language it can occur because of the lack of foreign language vocabulary or poor listening skills.

There are lots of mondegreens in songs:

Sometimes people use the so called ‘deliberate’ mondegreens which give TV shows, performances comic or ironic effect.

Conclusion

There are some linguistic phenomena the names of which were coined by English speaking people in the XXth century.  These phenomena are quite different and have different features and functions. Some of them make speech richer and more colourful. Others are an everlasting source of humour and irony.

Bibliography

1. https://www.thoughtco.com/name-that-nym-1692671
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
3. https://www.thoughtco.com/retronym-words-1692051
4. https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Mondegreen/
5.  www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/mondegreen.html
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
7. https://yandex.ru/search/?text=%20mondegreens%20in%20popular%20songs&lr=16#/videowiz?filmId=13791668434195561551