This study focused on brand names as a research topic as they clearly show today's language life and the consciousness of the Korean speaking people according to the times. Among numerous brand names, 639 confectionary brand names (candy category 220,...
This study focused on brand names as a research topic as they clearly show today's language life and the consciousness of the Korean speaking people according to the times. Among numerous brand names, 639 confectionary brand names (candy category 220, sweets category 276, frozen sweets category 143) most sensitive to the fad were classified by etymology, phonology, vocabulary and meaning in order to investigate their characteristics.
First, as a result of classifying them based on word origin, foreign words were the most with a proportion of 52.74% followed by mixed words at 20.81%, native words at 18% and chinese words at 8.45%. The proportion of native words is still far lower than that of foreign words. However, native words are more preferred recently because they give fresh feelings and are easy to remember. The proportion of Chinese words was the lowest. Brand names consisting of Chinese words are advantageous in that they can deliver affluent meanings with short syllables, but they also have limits that they might be coercible and uncomfortable to the younger generation. Therefore, Chinese brand names are expected to continue to decrease. Brand names consisting of foreign words showed the highest proportion because of a recognition that they seem to be more polished and professional. As a result of classifying 337 brand names consisting of foreign words according to word origin, English words were the most with 302 words(89.61%) and words from other language were 35(10.39%). Hybrid words consists of more than two different languages. As confectionary brand names are easy to appear and disappear according to the fad, the proportion of hybrid words was big.
Second, as a result of analyzing the consonants and vowels of the first syllables to investigate phonetic characteristics, consonants were frequently used in the order of ‘ㅂ, ㅁ, ㅅ, ㅎ, ㅋ, ㅊ, ㄷ, ㄱ, ㅈ, ㅍ, ㄹ, ㅌ, ㅆ, ㅃ, ㄴ, ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅉ’ and vowels were used in the order of ‘ㅏ, ㅗ, ㅣ, ㅜ, ㅔ, ㅡ, ㅓ, ㅐ, ㅠ, ㅘ, ㅛ, ㅑ, ㅕ, ㅞ, ㅖ, ㅟ, ㅙ, ㅝ.’ This shows that consonant phonemes easy to pronounce are used frequently, while vowels such as ‘ㅏ, ㅗ’ are frequently used because they are light vowels and single vowels easy to pronounce.
Third, this study classified brand names by word class and word formation, and investigated spelling characteristics.
Concerning classification by word class, a total of 206 brand names consisting of native words, Chinese words and mixed words were the subjects. As a result, noun types were overwhelmingly most at 71.36% and phrase or clause types were about 20%. However, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, interjections, noun/postposition types were very small.
In order to the characteristics of word formation, brand names were first classified into simple words and compound words. As a result, the proportion of compund words was far higher than that of simple words(simple words 18.62%, compound words 81.38%) as confectionary brand names include information about the taste or shapes of the products. And then 206 brand names consisting of native words, Chinese words and mixed words were classified by the number of morphemes. The findings show that brand names consisting of two morphemes are 28.16% and three morphemes are 42.23% - more than 70% consist of two or three morphemes. In addition, brand names were classified by the number of syllables, and as a result, about 60% of them consist of three or four syllables(three syllables 28.33%, four syllables 28.79%), which is to give clear impressions to consumers and make them easy to pronounce at once. On the other hand, brand names with more than seven syllables were about 15% and most of them were launched recently. Thus, the structure of brand names is expected to become prosaic as time goes by.
When it comes to the characteristics of spelling, some brand names aimed to deliver meanings easily and be recognized visually by using various marks or numbers regardless of grammar, and others intended to destruct spelling to get expressional effect.
Fourth, the characteristics in terms of meaning were investigated by classifying the brand words into direct and indirect expressions. Among direct-expression brand names were those which highlighted ingredient names or effect. Direct expression is advantageous in that it can show the merits and special features of the products clearly. Meanwhile, brand names using indirect expression were those which adopted same sound to be interpreted more than two meanings.
By classifying confectionary brand names based on etymology, phonology, vocabulary and meaning and then researching their characteristics, this study was able to systematically examine the actual language use conditions and Korean philological characteristics reflected in confectionary brand names.
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