Naming Sports Clubs in Russian and English: an Onomasiological Aspect (in the names of football and hockey clubs of England, the USA, Russia, and Belarus).

The present paper regards the proper names of football and hockey teams of England, the USA, Russia, and Belarus. The investigation is based on a vast factual material comprising 550 proper names of teams that play on the top levels of the national and supranational league systems. The author aims at describing the main characteristic features of the four systems and bringing out the main tendencies in naming sports teams by contrasting them with each other. The peculiarities of naming sports teams are studied on the levels of structure and semantics. English-language names are multiword in 9 0% of cases, with 100% names of hockey clubs being complex by structure. Simple names of teams are observed in English football clubs (33% of all English FC). The Russian-language names are more diverse. The ratio of simple, compound, and complex names of teams is 76:10:14 in Russian. The non-typical character of the compound names of teams for Russian is reflected in numerous juxtaposed names. Complex names are quite often the result of the influence of North American system of names. They are helpful while differentiating between the team and its affiliate. Semantic characteristics largely depend on the traditions in the process of naming teams in English and Russian. Multiword names of English and American sports teams traditionally include the name of the city or region where the club is based (the motivator) and the differentiator. The former is an indispensable element of the English-language names; the latter is sometimes absent and mostly does not represent real characteristics. The differentiator turns to the words describing different groups of people, fauna, natural phenomena, etc. in the names of hockey teams. The English tend to work out a system of words like City, United, etc. specialized in naming football clubs. In Russian both elements (the motivator and the differentiator) merge, while the name of the region moves out of the proprial part of the name. Proper names of sports societies and cities and common names denoting people, objects and substances motivate Russian names in most cases. Belarusian names are derived from the proper names of towns and enterprises and common names denoting people of certain profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]