Abstract: The most likely candidate for the type of proper noun most liable to be
affected by neology could well be the trade mark or the product name. As a member
of a class presented as a special case in lexical dynamics, the trade or product name,
which ultimately aims at triggering the act of purchase, is specifically neological in
all cases. The aim here is to analyse how meaning is produced from the trade or
product name in itself and for itself, as Saussurian linguistics would have it. The
corpus used is comprised of all trade names registered in France up to 2004 at the
official body, Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle. This computer assisted
analysis brings out various models of neologisms which are invoked. This way,
different strategies can be pointed out in the lexical constructions thus created,
notably neology of meaning and neology of form, involving the creation of a new
word (reuse of existing words, creations, loans from other languages, neography).
It will be seen how visual and discursive contextualisation aims at mobilising
all this linguistically creative potential. Thus the analysis will concentrate on such
names of products as Twingo, Kangoo and Espace, which represent three different
types of neology (form and bits of loans, form and meaning, meaning by changing
from a common noun to a proper noun).
