Hybridization in commercial names (on the material of naming cafes and restaurants)
Peculiarities of hybrid names of cafes and restaurants are analyzed in the article from the point of view of modern social linguistics and language and cultural studies. It is shown that hybridization as a part of creative naming influences not only the structure and the meaning of commercial names but also their perception. More than one thousand commercial names of Russian cafes and restaurants of various status including about three hundred hybrid commercial names are studied. Local commercial names of Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Chelyabinsk are chosen to show general tendencies and local peculiarities in naming. Hybrid commercial names are understood in the article as structurally and semantically contaminated names of commercial organizations which reflect cognitive mechanisms of place names formation, influence of language fashion, language creativity, on the one hand, and stereotypical tendencies in commercial naming, on the other hand. Commercial names form a mixed lexical system of minor place names. Being market oriented, they are open to changes, foreign influence. On the level of word-building, hybrid commercial names are formed by compounding, affixation and blending. Hybrid names of cafes and restaurants occur as a result of using mixed alphabets, completely or partially assimilated borrowings, play of words. Hybrid commercial names are not always identified with the named objects misleading potential customers.