Motivwandel bei der Namengebung deutscher Unternehmen

Eine diachronische Analyse (am Beispiel der Genossenschaften)

Abstract

There is a considerable public interest in the name-giving of top-ranking firms in the German economy. However, the world of business doesn't completely consist of, or depend on global players listed on the DAX index, on the contrary - to a large degree economic life is dependend on SMEs, small and medium sized enterprises. If we want to gain some insight into actual name-giving tendencies in German commerce and industry we ought to take a closer look at the diachronic development of company names. In this article account is given of such an analysis of names in the cooperative sector. Cooperative organisations allow to differentiate between several branches of the economy, and between varying sizes of companies, keeping at the same time the legal form of the enterprise invariable. As most important results of this inquiry we can conclude: Big companies directed strongly at interregional and international activities under strong competition make use of the most modern elements in their name-giving. They prefer elements such as abbreviations, deviations from orthographical norms, and fancy names/neologisms, and rather tend to avoid elements like owner names or geographical indications (like the seat of the company, or its sphere of action).