AS VARIED AS THE CLIENTELE BREEDS: ON NAMES OF PET BOARDING BUSINESSES

This study explores the language of pet service industry by examining the English names of pet boarding businesses. In particular, the naming patterns of 173 pet care facilities (for dogs and/or cats) in a large US metropolitan county were examined. The linguistic strategies and processes uncovered are as varied as the clientele breeds, including phonetic substitution, metonymic projection, onomatopoeia, and foreign borrowing. Moreover, the emotive association evoked is often conveyed through the conceptual or connotative content of particular lexical choices. The findings on the collective samples reflect contemporary attitude towards our fur children and point to an increasing trend towards pet humanization and pet care premiumisation. Though the dataset relates to a segment of the population, the onomastic phenomena observed may still be broadly applicable.