Mám doma kočku a mám ji rád! Ale jak ji pojmenovat? aneb o felionymech ve srovnávací perspektivě (na materiálu českého, slovenského a polského jazyka)
I Have a Cat at Home and I Like it! What Do I Call it? A Comparative View of Felinonyms or Cat Name

Summary/Abstract: This article explores a phenomenon in zoonymy, i.e. the naming of animals. It studies the names of cats, the species which, alongside dogs, accounts for the majority of domestic animals in both cities and the countryside. What is more, cats do win much human affection. The analyses conducted are synchronous and comparative; the study focuses on research material from three West-Slavic languages, Czech, Slovak and Polish. The corpus of felionyms comprises 330 unique cat names, each language contributing 110 entries. All the names described refer to urban cats. The analytical part of the article is preceded by a number of observations focusing on terminology and the existing research on the subject. The classification of cat names comprises three categories: I. Indirectly motivated felionyms; II. Directly motivated felionyms; and III. Felionyms with multiple motivations. Categories I and II branch out into additional sub-categories. The most productive motivations for the cat names include: the colour of the fur on a part or the entirety of the cat’s body; size; corpulence; hairiness; pragmatic aspects; names and/or surnames of characters from television, films, literature and songs; and commemorative and birthday names. Among the least productive categories, one may enumerate temporal names; matro- and patronymic names; toponyms; and chrematonyms. The vast majority (almost 80%) of the names in the corpus can be treated as metaphoric transfers. The remaining cases can be considered word-forming derivations, mainly formed through the addition of a suffix.

• Details
• Contents