It is often said that in the text of the Russian translation the proper names in most cases are not given in translation but in transliteration. It may even be seen in reality. Nonetheless, there is a special breed of proper names that this rule does not refer to or only refers to in a limited range.



One instance are expressions thatare partially made of a proper name and the other part of it are common words. The eponymous lexical items are implied here. Before we go into this problem of eponymics any deeper, let us analyze a bit and discover the notion of the word eponym and its derivatives in the science of the language. The collection of all words in the English and Russian languages is divided into two big categories: appellatives and proper names. If you have a grasp of ancient Greek, you could know that the lexical unit ?eponym? means ?naming? or ?giving the name?. For ancient people eponyms originally meant people, gods or heroes, whose names were employed to name villages, families and different objects, as well as governmental positions (e.g. archonts, consuls). In the period of a couple of centuries, the meaning of ?eponym? expanded to include not only the some name, but also other objects that shared some metaphorical similiarity.

Currently, linguists use the word ?eponym? to speak of a word that has ceased working as a proper name and now works as a simple regular noun. Therefore, we work with three individual components of an eponym:

1. an entity or an object

2. proper name

3. regular word.

When a translator works with an English text, they have to guess the background awareness of the English text intended audience and the degree of awareness of the Russian reader. The meaning of eponymism is created on stereotypical associations that deal with a specific, certain eponym and having the character of encyclopedic connotation. Differences between those connotations in the English and Russian languages lead to a number of cases of appellativization of proper names. The primary question connected with eponymisms is the subject of their etymological transparency which is a secret feature depending on the linguistic competence and background knowledge of Russian native audiences. Here the question pops up: in what way should a translator deal with eponyms? A number of eponyms share a common etymological background which makes translators job easy, for example ?superman? or ?Lolita?.

Similar situation applies also to the eponymisms, which have lost their transparency in both English and Russian. (e.g.: Adonis who was named after a beautiful guy loved by both Aphrodite and Persephone and murdered by a 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). Nevertheless, the situation is more complicated if a particular eponymism is easily understood in English, and therefore it has some symbolic connotation, and in the Russian language it does not evoke any mental reactions of speakers who do not link the common word and its connotation with an appropriate eponym. As you may observe, not all eponyms make interpereters think hard. The eponyms which are non-transparent, do not lead to any difficulties in Russian translation at all.