Snack Names In China

Dan Zhao

doi:10.5195/names.2021.2345

Abstract

Previous studies of snack names have focused on their psychological impact on consumers in different cultures but have tended to ignore their onomastic features. This study helps to address this gap based on a corpus of 121 snack names extracted from the book Chinese Famous Local Delicious Food and Special Products. This study explores the patterns of syllables, sounds, and name types of snack names compiled in this small-scale corpus. In this investigation, it was found that descriptive names were the dominant type in the corpus and the most frequently described type feature was the food ingredient. Interestingly, metaphorical names in the corpus were in general found to be related to shape similarities. Contrary to previous findings on dish names and drinking brand names in China, the snack names examined in this corpus showed a preference for three-syllable patterns and “light” or “flat” tones. After discussing these and other findings of this research, this paper discusses what insights this study may provide for other name investigations that utilize corpus linguistic approaches.

Highlights

Previous Research on Food Product NamesMany studies have demonstrated that an attractive product name can help to promote sales by heightening consumer interest and purchasing readiness
The snack names used in this study were extracted from the book Chinese Famous Local Delicious Food and Special Products
This study involved an empirical analysis of snack names in China using corpus techniques, modern digital technologies, and the automatic tagging tool

Summary

Introduction

Previous Research on Food Product NamesMany studies have demonstrated that an attractive product name can help to promote sales by heightening consumer interest and purchasing readiness. A study by Verrill et al (2020) discovered that the food brand names containing the noun vita were perceived by consumers to be healthier than those that did not include vita even when the two products contained the same nutritional content. To have such a positive effect on spending habits, it has been determined that “a successful commercial name must be memorable, distinctive, and positive in association” (Algeo & Algeo 2000, 266). In China, what a food is called is just as important as what ingredients a food contains

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