Soma, Kärsä-Pähkinä ja Junavahti: turkulaisten asunto-osakeyhtiöiden nimet

• Paula Sjöblom

Avainsanat: nimistöntutkimus, paikannimet

Abstrakti

Soma, Kärsä-Pähkinä and Junavahti: names of housing corporations in Turku (englanti)

3/2000 (104)

Paula Sjblom ([e-mail])

NAMES OF HOUSING CORPORATIONS IN TURKU

The article deals with the syntactic structure of Finnish housing corporation names, on which little research has previously been conducted in onomastics, and the type of semantic factors connected with the names. The material consists of 1,785 housing corporation names in Turku from the period 1896-1997.

Housing corporations have their origins in the late 19th century changes in social structure in Finland. The idea was that workers could obtain their own accommodation independently but using collective resources. From here the idea spread rapidly to the middle and upper classes. A characteristic feature right up to the 1960s was that the founders of a housing corporation would be united by a common factor, such as occupation or social status. The rapid urbanisation that occurred in Finland in the 1960s transformed the activities of housing corporations into part of the market economy, and at the same time the naming of the companies was transferred from the residents themselves to the building developer.

From a legal point of view, a housing corporation name is a business name, but in practice it is also perceived as the name of the building. Its function can be one of location, but it may also personify its referent. An additional function of housing corporation names today is marketing.

The conventional division of place names into syntactic-semantic elements is not in itself applicable to the material in this study. The writer presents an alternative method for dividing a housing corporation name into different elements. Taking as an example the name of Asunto Oy Sigyninranta, Turku, the name is divided into a type component (Asunto Oy), a naming component perceived as the actual name (Sigyninranta), and sometimes also a refining component specifying the locality (Turku). The components of the name also have their own syntactic structure.

The semantic features of the housing corporation names are considered in terms of what they express to the user: 1) the name reveals the location of the housing corporation; 2) the name seeks to project a positive image; 3) the name says something about the external appearance of the companys building; or 4) the name indicates who is the owner or developer (of the building). Some names serve only one of these functions, but many serve several of them. Most of the names express location in some way, either in relation to the local place names or by reference to geographical or cultural features.

The names of the housing corporations reflect life in Finland. They reflect the likings, aspirations and values of the residents previously as the direct inventions of the residents themselves, and nowadays indirectly via the market, offering pleasing names to tempt buyers.