Tracing Environmental Elements in British Proper Names

Abstract

Personal names have been studied within separate disciplines, but there has been little attention toward the environment's trace in proper names to date. Mühlhäusler (2003) declares a close interconnection between language and environment, whether language shapes the environment or it constructs the language. As a result of this ecological approach, the present study aims to discover the trace of environment and ecology in British proper names. The author of the present article collected 1062 British proper names from online sources in male (n=613) and female (n=449) genders. Then through the content analysis, the author classified them based on their environmental elements and approaches. The present article's central hypothesis is that trace of environmental elements is available in British proper names. The second hypothesis is that environmental approaches are also available in British proper names. The third hypothesis is that female British proper names include more trace of environmental elements than male. The findings approved the first and second hypotheses, but the third hypothesis was rejected.