Linguistic Characteristics of Domestic Men's Formal Wear Brand Names

Abstract

The main purpose of this research was to examine the linguistic characteristics of domestic men's formal wear brand name. Four linguistic characteristics of language type, combined structure type of language, word class, length of brand name were investigated in this research and also examined the difference between brand type. For sample selection, the 209 men's fashion brands were selected from ‘2009 Korea Fashion Yearbook’ and then, 25 brands which could not collect proper informations about the brand name or naming were excluded. Among total 184 men's brand names, 66 men's formal wear brands were selected and studied. For data analysis, quantitative evaluation of the frequency and qualitative evaluation have been used. The result as follows.;(1) Seven language types were found in domestic men's formal wear brand names. English has been used the most, then followed by Italian and French. (2) For combined structure type of brand name language, the single word used the most , followed by separately combined word type, artificially combined word, and unified word type. (3) The most frequently used the type of word class was noun, and followed by phrase, adjective, and verb. In the noun type, 6 different types which expressed a person, concrete & abstract entity, place, acronym, and neologic were found. For phrase, only noun type was appeared, however, 6 out of 20 phrases were abbreviated type. All eight adjective brand names implied an attributive character of the brand such as 'Dainty‘ or ’Solus(Solo)‘. (4)The long name used most and then followed by normal and short length of brand name. Looking by the number of syllable, 4 syllables appeared the most and then followed by 3, 5, 6, 2 & 7 showed the same rate, and 8 syllables. (5) The result which compared the difference according to each brand type showed a difference in its language type, language combined style, word class, but length of brand name.