Structural and semantic analysis of selected names of dentist’s private practices in the province of Podkarpacie

Abstract

This article is devoted to a structural and semantic analysis of selected names (approximately eight hundred onyms) of dentist’s private practices operating now in the province of Podkarpacie. Increased awareness of the society as regards health, hygiene and physical culture was one of the effects of political and economic transformations that took place after 1989 in Poland. In connection with it, numerous medical private practices were established, inclusive of the dentist’s ones, in which a wide scope of new services were offered to the patients, like in the Western countries. The onyms discussed here, that name current dentist’s private practices, are a specific linguistic exemplification of the said intensive transformations in the Polish health services. In the collected set of names, two main categories are clearly differentiated. The first category includes names formed in part with an element of anthroponic character (forename and surname of the owner) and in part with an element giving information about a type of medical activity. Whereas, the second category covers multiword onyms encompassing a portmanteau element that is so fashionable now in the company’s names. Thus, dentists adjust the names of their private practices to the current tendencies in naming of businesses, trying to make the names of their private practices original, unique and thanks to that effective in alluring new customers - patients.