Original scientific paper

Arbor mundi in the Names of Catering Establishments

Laura Šakaja

Abstract

No matter for whom a café or bar is intended – for the general public or for a given consumer category (students with thin wallets, rich middle-age clients, tourists on vacations, etc.) – there are often attempts to harmonize its name with the symbolic value systems of potential clients. For that reason, symbols are imputed into such names, which anticipate social values and conform to the assumed tastes and identities of clients. This is precisely the hypothesis of this paper, the aim of which was to analize the names of catering establishments in Croatia and on the basis of this gain insight into the value structures and cultural models that such names evoke.
Although advertising names, in the nature of things, cannot give a full picture of culture, they can quite well indicate, from the perspective of our culture, the image of what is seen as a desirable world. As the analysis showed, the main traits of a desirable world are: a) intimacy and security, shown by the use of “topophile” semantics in advertising names; b) peace and tranquility of a protected haven in nature, created through the use of semantics of the “the garden of Eden” type; c) wealth, glitter, lavishness, highly axiologically positioned through frequent references to jewels, gold and world metropola; d) heavenliness and greatness – their high status can be recognized in the use of names of gods from Olympus, saints and stars; e) eliteness and prestige, manifested in symbols associated with power and victory.
In the names of cafés and bars we can se a tendency towards escapism – a desire to run from everyday life into another (magical) world. This tendency shows itself, inter alia, also in the use of personages taken from the world of fiction – fairy tales, literature, animated films.
In short, the world constructed through advertising names of catering establishments is a world without trash and evil. This world is friendly and secure, tranquil and easy, it is a world without hard work. Since the names of cafés and bars often contain a mediated significance (intertextual and intermedial), they reflect the (auto)references of a culture. Given that such establishments are directed towards various types of clients, their names indicate the cultural polyphony of an area.

Keywords

CULTURAL PATTERNS; NAMES; CATERING ESTABLISHMENTS (CAFÉS AND BARS)

Hrčak ID:

14453

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/14453

Publication date:

30.6.2004.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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