Vernacular Chinese Urbanonyms as a Reflection of Ordinary Urban Culture in the City of Chengdu, China

The article deals with the Chinese vernacular urbanonyms as part of the modern urban language and culture. The author studied the origins and use of popular urbanonyms with their speech practices and nominative creativity. The research involved some methods of cultural and social linguistics, as well as an online questionnaire of Chengdu citizens. The respondents saw vernacular urbanonyms as a sign of familiarity with the urban environment. Such words were popular with young people and working-age residents, regardless of their education background. In general, vernacular urbanonyms were seen as part of informal interpersonal communication and were evaluated quite positively. According to the respondents, vernacular urbanonyms emerge for the following reasons. They contrast with boring official names because they are "vivid" and "lively", with emotional, evaluative and figurative connotations. They help to distinguish between similar environmental objects with the same functions. They are shorter than official names. They identify nameless urban objects. They preserve old names that are out of official use. The onomasiological analysis established that vernacular urbanonyms verbalize a number of motives, e.g., a landmark, a reinterpretation of official urban names, a reduced official name, a metaphor, phonetic similarity with the official name, etc. As a result of social practices of ordinary city culture, vernacular urbanonyms reflect the values of everyday city life, e.g., wayfinding, linguistic economy, expressiveness, and subjectivity. The pragmatics of urbanonyms reveal crude folk humor and irony. However, some of them demonstrate positive and even lyrical imagery, which is typical of Chinese national linguistic culture.