Eastern Gastronomic Ergonyms in Moscow Language Landscape (Based on the Restaurant, Café and Street Food Names)

Abstract

The article considers café, restaurant, and street food shop names related to eastern/oriental (Middle Asian and Caucasian) cuisine that has recently become extremely popular in Russia, especially so in Moscow, with regard to their ethnic identity. The naming system of the above ergonyms, being part of urbanonyms, has revealed both activization of old Russian assimilated gastronomic orientalisms and an influx of new ones, highly creative on different language levels.A complex analysis of about 500 ergonyms in public catering, randomly selected from respective sites and partially from street signs and ads, has shown, on the one hand, a tendency towards fusion of various eastern cuisines with one of them dominating, and on the other hand, we observe a kind of specialization (diversity) in oriental cuisine and gastronomic terms. The following language and discursive ethnic identical devices have been found: use of specific toponyms and ethnonyms employed in isolation and in combination with the words ‘restaurant’ or ‘café’; names of top traditional dishes (culinary terms), products, plants, artefacts, kitchen attributes; personal names with transparent inner form; culturally marked precedent phenomena (including utterances), and abstract words; parallel usage of Russian and Latin types, their hybrid form as well as Russian type imitating eastern style.Language and discursive diversity of the thematic group “Eastern cuisine”, in our opinion, indirectly contributes to forming a more positive image of the eastern (Middle Asian & Caucasian) immigrants in the Russian citizens’ minds compared to that of about ten years ago, as a result of which Russians are taking a far greater interest in the Middle Asians’ and Caucasians’ cultural values.The results of the research may enrich modern Eastern borrowing dictionaries, help systematize their terminology and be of use in such courses as Cultural linguistics, Inter-(cross-) cultural communication, and Urbanology.