Lexico-Cultural Variations in Product Naming: A Note on the Names of Handcrafted Soaps

Lindsey N.H. Chen

doi:10.1080/00277738.2020.1751458

Lexico-Cultural Variations in Product Naming: A Note on the Names of Handcrafted Soaps

Lindsey N.H. Chen^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of English

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This comparative study examines the names of handcrafted soaps, a group of natural products that has become popular among environmentally conscientious consumers in recent years. In particular, 339 names of US-based handcrafted soaps (US-HS) and 324 names of Taiwan-based shou gong fei zhou ‘lit. hand craft soap’ (TW-HS) were analyzed and compared. The findings show that plant and food names predominate in HS names and reflect the cultural and herbal preferences in both regions. In addition, colorful, allusive, and novel coinages were found to be frequent among US-HS names. By comparison, function-denoting words were mainly found among TW-HS names. This study provides insights into potential cross-cultural variations in consumer product naming.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	76-87
Number of pages	12
Journal	Names
Volume	68
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00277738.2020.1751458
Publication status	Published - 2020 Apr 2

Keywords

phytonymy, Asia
plant names
product names
soap

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Demography
Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language

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10.1080/00277738.2020.1751458

Cite this

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abstract = "This comparative study examines the names of handcrafted soaps, a group of natural products that has become popular among environmentally conscientious consumers in recent years. In particular, 339 names of US-based handcrafted soaps (US-HS) and 324 names of Taiwan-based shou gong fei zhou {\textquoteleft}lit. hand craft soap{\textquoteright} (TW-HS) were analyzed and compared. The findings show that plant and food names predominate in HS names and reflect the cultural and herbal preferences in both regions. In addition, colorful, allusive, and novel coinages were found to be frequent among US-HS names. By comparison, function-denoting words were mainly found among TW-HS names. This study provides insights into potential cross-cultural variations in consumer product naming.",

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Lexico-Cultural Variations in Product Naming: A Note on the Names of Handcrafted Soaps

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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