Brand Naming Issues of Tourism in a Coal Mining Cluster

Abstract

This paper aims at providing a synthetic (semantic, social, cultural, historic) survey on the names used for the tourist and catering business entities in Kuzbass, with an attempt to discover the reason for naming trends in the region. Naming is one of the most ubiquitous and important activities in business sphere, pursuing a number of goals: (1) identifying and promoting the brand / image of a business entity; (2) making sure the business will function well because its name is alluring for clients, or the name is targeted efficiently; (3) the name renders the values and ideology of the company. Linguistically, the main ways to produce business or brand names are the following: abbreviations, shortenings and/or blends, associations, allusions / associations, rhyming, transonimization (using proper names of real or imaginary people for business names), using foreign words, significant numbers, quotations / allusions / alliterations / mythological elements. “Traditional” naming may exploit ancient elements (old-fashioned and outdated words, spelling, grammar, etc.). Naming in Kuzbass in tourist sphere does not rely heavily on mining concept, but rather exploits its regional exotics and a competitive differentiator. Recreational tourism in its naming promotes the concept of vast taiga spaces and pristine Siberian nature.