What’s in a Name? Classification of Proper Names by Language

 
4. Proper names in advertising and linguistic landscape 
 
Texts in advertisements and in the linguistic landscape often contain proper names. 
Proper names (also called ‘proper nouns’) are a semantic category of nouns. While 
common nouns distinguish one sort of being or thing from the other sorts, proper 
names distinguish individuals from each other; they identify someone or something. 
Proper names are especially found in reference to people, animals, geographical units, 
ships, aeroplanes, buildings, celestial bodies, periods of time, organizations and 
institutions (Haeseryn et al., 1997). Proper names that are widely found in the 
linguistic landscape include shop names, brand and product names and the names of 
residents. In many languages that are written in the Latin alphabet, proper names are 
usually written with an initial capital letter. In this section the role that proper names 
play in advertising and in the linguistic landscape is investigated on the basis of a 
short literature review. 
Piller (2000: 267) observes: “The brand name is arguably the most central 
linguistic item of an ad - it is what it is all about.” She investigated a sample of 658 
advertising spots that were broadcast on German television. In 34% of the 
advertisements, only the brand name is in a language other than German while the 
remainder of the ad uses German. Moreover, in another 6% of the advertisements the 
brand name, setting and/or song are in another language. 
Salih and El-Yasin (1994, in El-Yasin and Mahadin (1996)) interviewed 
customers concerning their attitudes toward foreign names. Although El-Yasin and 
Mahadin (1996) do not mention this, these customers are probably from Jordan. When 
asked which of two clothes shops - one with an English name, the other with an 
Arabic name - they thought was more expensive, 73% of the interviewees thought the 
shop with the English name would be more expensive compared to 3% for the shop 
with the Arabic name. In answering a later question, 83% of the customers thought 
better quality clothes are more expensive; no one said the opposite. From the answers 
to both questions the researchers conclude that a large majority of customers associate 

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foreign names with good quality products. Thus, the language of proper names may 
contribute to persuading customers to buy. 
Proper names are particularly suitable for impersonal multilingualism. They 
do not have the purpose of transmitting factual information but to appeal to emotions; 
the connotation is more important than the denotation. Schlick (2003: 6) came across 
the shop names & AND and after in the Italian city Trieste. And and after are function 
words, which have little or no lexical meaning. She remarks about this: “In the cases 
above, the language itself, English as the international language of trendiness, seems 
to carry enough additional meaning that shop owners consider even function words 
appropriate as shop names.” Thus, an important function of proper names is to convey 
a feeling.