Особенности названий американских городов

Toponyms are special lexical units that need to be deeply studied and classified. Acknowledging the toponymy of the United States can help in achieving one of the important aims of teaching foreign languages - getting closer to the culture, customs and history of English-speaking countries.

The topicality of this graduation work is defined by the growing interest in the problems not only of toponymy in general, but also of the systemization of American place names.

The aim of the research is to analyze the names of towns (cities and villages) situated in the territory of Maine and trace their origin.

To achieve the stated aim the following tasks are to be solved: firstly, to study the scientific literature on the toponymy, placenames, the history of the USA and particularly Maine. Then it is necessary to identify the role of toponymy in the language system and point out the key features of English toponymy. Finally, the history of American toponyms should be traced and placenames in Maine is to be analyzed from the perspective of their etymology and structure.

Thus, the object of the research are various populated place names in the State of Maine, and the subject of the research is their etymological and structural peculiarities.

The study is based on 40 names of settlements selected from the map of the State, taken from the Google Maps, as well as various sites of the cities of Maine, and the encyclopedia of Maine.

Studying of the theoretical material led to certain conclusions.

Firstly, the toponymy is an important branch of science that includes geography, ethnography, linguistics and others. The main originated factors of toponymy are: structure and etymology.

Secondly, the toponymy of the USA consists of: aboriginal, path-

Breaker, migration, Russian and modern toponymy.

Thirdly, the toponyms structurally can be formed by conversion, affixation, contamination, composition or foreign languages influence.

The practical part of the study deals with the structural and semantic analysis of 40 oikonyms, in the course of study the following conclusions were made:

The main etymological factors of their origination were the following: the proper names, the names of foreign countries and cities, the natural features, the peculiarities of the nations, the personal choices, the occupations, the religion, the mythology and the historical events.

The most frequent etymological feature is memorial (cities names origin from the names of the first owners of the places, or the names of outstanding political leaders). The least frequent is ethnical. It can be a result of difficulties with pronunciation of the aboriginals' names.

The analysis of structural factors showed the following: placenames can be formed by conversion, affixation, word combination, composition and foreign languages influence.

The most frequent structural feature is conversion (22 words of 40). The least frequent features are foreign language influences (6) and affixation (6).

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Особенности названий американских городов

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