Abstract:
Proper names as special signs of any language exist in different forms and present an open
system which is expanding and shrinking permanently. The expansion of the proper name stock
is easily explained by new ways of nomination, new objects to be named, new fashion for extravagant names, like naming children Facebook or Twitter, as it used to be with Sputnik or other
newly emerged notions. But the system of proper names is also transforming inside and shrinking
when some names fall out of use, or they transform into common names through an intermediary
stage of being connotonyms. In this paper I would like to dwell upon some ways of name transformation concentrating on the semantics of a poetonym with a vast semantic structure, having
become legendary and widely referred to, played with and used for remaking of all kinds, the
name of the Prince of Denmark, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
