Kynonyms as a Сomponent of the Zoonymic Space of German Linguoculture

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to explicate the linguocultural potential of German kynonyms (dog names). The article analyzes the formation of the cognitive space of kynonymic vocabulary in the German language, which is based on linguocultural codes that accumulate the laws of functioning of society, the historical and social processes occurring in it. The linguistic essence of the lexico-semantic group ‘kynonyms’ is revealed. The paper deals with the semantic structure of kynonyms on the material of German-language dog names presented on Internet sites, identifies trends in the formation of German-language kynonyms as a separate stratum of the zoonomic space of linguoculture. It is shown that the process of giving names to dogs has its own specific features in the German language and depends both on the structural features of the language and on extralinguistic factors. Kynonyms are seen as a source for studying the worldview of German pet owners. The results of the study show that German kynonyms, as signs of onomastic linguoculture, in a semantic sense accumulate culturally specific information in the triad ‘pet (dog) – motivational sign – kynonym’. A kynonym, which is, as a rule, an important component indicating personality traits of a pet, is not a mere set of sounds, but encoded information. German-language kynonyms, on the one hand, reflect the realities of an intra-social nature, on the other hand, go beyond it. The study concludes that the kynonymic system of German linguoculture reflects some aspects of social traditions, tastes, preferences, ideological principles. It is noted that such visual animalistic images as Eichhörnchen (squirrel), Irbis (snow leopard), Frettchen (ferret), the character traits ‘courage’, ‘cowardice’, ‘cunning’, ‘kindness’, ‘resourcefulness’, etc. are implicitly present in the semantics of kynonyms.