Names in the Economy: Cultural Prospects

The economy has an increasingly powerful role in the contemporary global world. Academic scholars who study names have recognised this, and, as such, onomastic research has expanded from personal and place names towards names that reflect the new commercial culture. Companies are aware of the significance of naming. Brand, product and company names play an important role in business. Culture produces names and names produce culture. Commercial names shape cultures, on the one hand, and changes in cultures may affect commercial names on the other. The world of the economy and business has created its own culture of names, but this naming culture may also affect other names; even place names and personal names are influenced by it. Names in the Economy: Cultural Prospects is composed of 20 articles that were produced from a collection of papers presented in 2012 at the fourth Names in the Economy symposium in Turku, Finland. These articles will equally be of interest to both academics and professionals. The goal of this book is multidisciplinary and theoretically diverse: it contemplates commercial-bound names from the viewpoints of linguistics and onomastics, as well as marketing and branding research. In addition to traditional onomastic standpoints, there are newer linguistic theories, sociological and communicational views, multimodality theory, and branding theories. The authors are scholars from three continents and from ten different countries.