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Abstract
The present paper deals with mediation, a particular linguistic mechanism of designating referents, which is different from conventional naming (performed by means of official proper names) and which relies on (synthetic or analytic) nomination auxiliaries. In the cases discussed, a referent’s identity is established indirectly, by means of unconventional names, the discursive functions of which are identified contextually. To be more precise, the attention is focused on mechanisms of fixing references through alterity, locative, and property.
Theoretically, this article is based on descriptive semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, whereas the field of investigation to which the study pertains is that of anthroponymy.
The corpus analyzed consists of unconventional anthroponymic structures from Romanian public space and from the Bible.
Notes
1 The translation of the quotes that are underlined as being originally in Romanian or French (marked by ‘orig. Romanian’ and ‘orig. French’ respectively) was made by the author of the present paper.
2 This study is part of a research project funded by CNCS, code PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0007 (contract no. 103/2011), called Unconventional Romanian Anthroponyms in European Context: Formation Patterns and Discursive Function, won in an international competition in 2011.
3 By standardized act of naming, the author means that instance in which a name is acknowledged by an administrative and/or clerical authority, and one’s registration into this new status (as a named entity) is supported by the authentication of the baptism in official documents (in registries, birth certificates, etc.).
4 ‘The act of naming is the starting point of every identity. In our society, an individual’s name points to his/her affiliation, that is, to his/her place within a series. […] Name-giving is the first symbolic act, the one that allows for the existence of an identity, not only with reference to a formal and administrative status, but, to the same extent, in relation to one’s introduction into a symbolic system of language. Likewise, the identity of a group and of its members consists in the name that is used to designate it. A group’s name indicates its origin, history, and place within society’ (Chauchat and Durand- Delvigne, 1999: 62, ap. Martin. 2012, 43, orig. French).
5 ‘[…] if to name an object is to give meaning to it, to identify an individual is to acknowledge him/her’ (Martin, 2005: 6, ap. Martin, 2012: 43, orig. French), ‘[…] but also to situate him/her within groups of affiliation. The first group, the one to whom the individual belongs, is that of gender affiliation, which is recorded in the registrar of civil status. Besides information related to one’s sex, this primary registration data also contains one’s forename and surname, date and place of birth, and a mention of parents’ identity. […] Name-giving offers individuals a unique status (in terms of the existence of a personal nominal space); it is an ‘organized ensemble of identifying elements that allow an individual to define himself/herself in a given situation, as a social agent’’ (Taboada-Leonetti, 1990: 44, ap. Martin, 2012: 43, orig. French).
6 This article does not pay attention to unconventional anthroponyms that are given in traditional rural communities to individuals who fall severely ill. In such cases, the initial name is changed with another that is believed to have apotropaic qualities (see also Evseev, 1997: s.v.).
7 Referring to the classifying function of names and considering the distinction Gardiner makes between ‘embodied’ and ‘disembodied’ names, Lévi-Strauss (2011: 188, orig. Romanian) claims the following about the latter onomastic class (which tallies with the stand supported by this paper, on the self-centered position of the name giver, as opposed to the peripheral role of the named object): ‘[…] they [n. n. names] assign parents (who choose their children’s names) to a certain environment, age, and style, but they also classify their bearers in several ways: firstly, because a John is a member of the class of Johns; and secondly, because every forename has, consciously or not, a cultural connotation that is ingrained onto the image others get of the bearer and that, by means of subtle twists, can contribute positively or negatively to shaping his/her personality.’
8 Given the fact that in the Catholic and Orthodox churches baptism occurs very early in one’s experience, it is premature to assert the prominence of certain mental/physical features that are representative of the child and that would lead to the giving of a ‘transparent’ name, motivated by the existence of such traits. Nevertheless, the situation is different as far as names of animals are concerned, whose mental and physical behavior allows for the attribution of names that tally with animals’ specific features, even if they are very young. This is actually one of the criteria that determine the choice of pet names. (In this respect, see the article the author wrote in collaboration with Oliviu Felecan, Considérations concernant les zoonyms: attribution et classification des noms dans le cas des chats de compagnie, forthcoming).
9 Gardiner (1954) distinguished between two types of proper names: ‘embodied’ and ‘disembodied’. ‘‘Embodied’ proper names are linked to an individual, a place, or an object, and refer ‘exclusively’ to this particular entity; these types of names are what we commonly call today (direct or rigid) designators. On the contrary, ‘disembodied’ proper names are phonic and lexical formations (‘word sounds’), which we usually study as regards their etymology, frequency, and usage in onomastics’ (Jonasson, 1994: 72, orig. French).
10 In agreement with Moeschler and Reboul (1999: 365, orig. Romanian), the prototype can be defined as ‘the best exemplar of a category, because it has the typical properties of the category in question, which is why it is not necessarily an instance of that category any longer, but it can be a mental construction;’ the prototype is ‘the object that has the biggest number of typical properties and, therefore, the most numerous relations of similarity with the other members of the category.’
11 ‘The pragmatic function […] is the connection that, starting from a trigger-element belonging to the parent space, identifies a target-element in a daughter space, thereby establishing the link between these two spaces’ (Moeschler and Reboul, 1999: 158, orig. Romanian).
12 ‘The pragmatic connection between a given space and the parent space is created by the pragmatic connectors between the triggers of parent spaces and the targets of daughter spaces’ (Moeschler and Reboul, 1999: 145, orig. Romanian).
13 ‘A definite or indefinite description is incomplete if it fails to determine a unique referent. This incompleteness is generally solved by means of pragmatic mechanisms of returning to the context’ (Moeschler and Reboul, 1999: 351, orig. Romanian).
14 Proper names have a multiple reference potential, but the reference is fixed for each of the uses (see Coates, 2006: 41).
15 The class of UA does not only include the names analyzed in this study, but nicknames, bynames, pseudonyms, and user names as well, unofficial names that the author of this paper has dealt with on other occasions. ‘The proper name, or nomen proprium conveys a relationship that links an individual to his/her self; it equally covers a nominal space that contains proper names (patronymic/matronymic and forename) […]. The nomen proprium marks a subject’s belonging to civil society, just as in the digital age, a user name marks one’s belonging to virtual (Internet) society; contrariwise, appellatives designate objects that have the same nature’ (Martin, 2012: 49, orig. French).
16 There are two aspects to significance: an interior one (related to what is in our mind), corresponding to the representational component, and an exterior one (related to what is in reality), corresponding to the referential component (see Oltean, 2003: 23).
17 Starting from Kripke’s statement (2001: 48), according to which rigid designators have to designate the same object in any possible world (without implying that the object must exist in all possible worlds), the UA discussed could be included in the category of rigid designators. Nevertheless, taking his interpretation further, Kripke dismisses this initial thesis, which complicates things by the descriptivist approach to names: ‘Suppose the reference of a name is given by a description or a cluster of descriptions. If the name means the same as that description or cluster of descriptions, it will not be a rigid designator. It will not necessarily designate the same object in all possible worlds, since other objects might have had the given properties in other possible worlds […]’ (2001: 57). It does not fall within the scope of the present study to prove whether or not mediated UA function as rigid designators. This controversial issue has been somewhat solved by Coates (2006: 30): ‘It is therefore false that the essential nature of names is that they uniquely denote individuals (except in the accidental case where a name as a matter of fact has only one bearer), but it is true that their essential duty is to refer uniquely to individuals […].’
18 For the quotations in the examples, The Official King James Bible Online (<http://www.kingjames-bibleonline.org/>) was used.
19 In fact, Salome’s mother is not mentioned in the Bible with any name; she is merely known as Herodias, Herod’s wife. One can claim that, in this case, there occurs a double encapsulation: the daughter of Herodias (for Salome)→ Herodias (for X, the wife of Herod).
20 ‘A partially descriptive name n is semantically associated with both a descriptive property PD and a referent o. The referent o is determined in part by the same non-descriptive mechanisms that determine the reference of ordinary non-descriptive names — for example, by a historical chain of transmission leading back to o’ (Soames, 2002: 88).
21 Due to the mining protests he organized in the 90s (and, implicitly, due to the resulting damage), Miron Cozma was seen as a threat to Romanian post-revolutionary democracy.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Daiana Felecan
Daiana Felecan has a BA degree in Romanian-Latin studies (1997, University of the West, Timişoara), and a PhD in Philology (2004, Romania). She is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (CUNBM), and the manager of a CNCS grant project. She has written five books and dozens of studies published in specialized proceedings/journals from thirteen countries.
Correspondence to: Daiana Felecan, North University Center of Baia Mare (UTCN), Department of Philology and Cultural Studies, 62 Victor Babeş Street, Baia Mare 430083, Romania. Email: [email protected]