Eponymous Terms in the Specialized Language of Science and Technology

Brojni su eponimni nazivi u uporabi u prirodnim i tehničkim znanostima. U radu donosimo kontrastivnu analizu primjera engleskih i hrvatskih eponima koji se upotrebljavaju u tim dvama područjima. Cilj je analize utvrditi razlike između dvaju jezika na ortografskoj, gramatičkoj, sintaktičkoj i semantičkoj razini. Eponime smo prema semantičkome kriteriju podijelili u pet skupina; odabrani su primjeri te klasifikacije također dio kontrastivne analize.Eponymous terms are frequently used in the language of science and technology. The paper deals with a contrastive analysis of examples of English and Croatian eponymous terms used in the language of science and technology. Most eponyms are persons, real historical figures, after whom a concept, a phenomenon, a process or a discovery is named, however, eponym may be any toponym, i.e. a country or a city, a brand name and even anything bearing a name. The goal of the analysis was to describe the eponymous terms with respect to their orthography, grammar, syntax and semantics and to establish the differences between the two languages. A semantic classification of the eponyms has been proposed and the examples presented in the classification were analysed and compared contributing to the linguistic analysis. The contrastive analysis has shown that in most cases an English eponymous term is also an eponym in Croatian, but there are a few exceptions showing that there are some English eponymous terms that are not eponyms in Croatian and vice versa. Most eponymous terms are of a permanent nature, only the ones that denote devices or products that have become obsolete remain to be used as historical terms. It has been found that in both languages there are pairs of synonyms in which one term is an eponymous term and the other one is a non-eponymous term. It was established that, firstly, such pairs are not always cognitive synonyms but near-synonyms, and secondly, that the meaning of non-eponymous terms is much more transparent than the meaning of eponymous terms. In terms of syntax, the differences between the two languages are naturally substantial as Croatian is a language with an extensive case system and English is a case-poor language. The semantic classification revealed a wide variety of concepts that are named after scientists and engineers, reflecting the fact that eponymous terms constitute a large portion of the specialized vocabulary of science and technology