There are some expressions that are in part a sort of proper names and partly a sort of common words. The eponymous lexical items are implied here. Though prior to setting the limits of the kind as well as other problematic questions dealing with eponymous phrases functioning in Russian translated texts, it is necessary to devote a bit of attention to the concept of the eponym and how this term functions in linguistic terminology. The array of all words in both English and Russian is subdivided into 2 big groups: appellatives and proper names. If you speak ancient Greek, you might know that the lexical unit ?eponym? means ?naming? or ?giving the name?. In theearly days of history eponyms came into existence from the names of people, heroes or deities to be later used in the names of towns, tribes, objects and even positions of power. As the time passed, the notion of ?eponym? expanded to include not only the personal name, but also other objects that shared some metaphorical similiarity.



These days the word "eponym" is more frequently used when you refer to common phrases which have been singled out in a language on the basis of displacing a single lexical item from the category of proper names to the class of regular lexical units with simultaneous attribution of metaphorical lexical meaning. Hence, we operate three elements of an eponym:

1. an entity or an object

2. proper name

3. regular word.

When an interpreter deals with an English text, they should assume the background competence of the audience for which the English text was intended and the level of awareness of the Russian reader. The connotation of eponym comes from the cultural context. Variations between those implications in the English and Russian languages predetermine a number of possibilities of appellativization of proper names. Linguistic competence of a speaker explains the degree of clarity of an eponym. In that case the question arises: is it okay for a Russian interpreter to think over such problems? Some eponyms share a joint etymological context which makes which makes them easy to translate, for example ?superman? or ?Lolita?.

If there is no clear understanding of the connotation among the people from the two cultures, then again the job of a translator is pretty easy. (e.g.: Adonis named after a handsome young man loved by both Aphrodite and Persephone and killed by a wild boar, or the game of badminton that got its name from Badminton in the South West of England, country seat of the Duke of Beaufort, where people started playing it). However, the situation is more difficult to figure out if a some eponym is easily understood in English, and therefore it has a bit of symbolic connotation, and in the Russian language it does not cause any response from speakers who fail to link the common word and its lexical meaning with an appropriate eponym. Obviously, not every eponym causes troubles. You will obviously come across some eponyms that are pretty straightforward to see through.