Intersemiotic and Interlingual Factors of Semantic Changes in Proper Names: Case Study of Hamlet as a Proper Name

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.