Bydgoskie nazwy firmowe ulicy Gdańskiej w okresie dwudziestolecia międzywojennego

Abstrakt

Gdańska Street was the main thoroughfare of Bydgoszcz, the exclusive street of the city during the twenty-year interwar period. Due to this fact, it featured seats of many multi-business, trade, service, catering companies, hotels, banks, insurance companies, department stores, agencies, factories, warehouses, showrooms, and movie theaters. There were a myriad of stores offering a wide variety of goods. Visual identifiers of individual places were signboards, tags, neon lights, brands, displays with names of companies and their specialties. As urban object names they were subject of language analysis. It was determined that both Polish and German names were used, as languages that were officially used in public in Bydgoszcz. The share of German names was 35%, whereas Polish names were reaching 65%. An analysis indicated significant influence of German culture and language. There were also names with the use of Latin, English and French loanwords. Among the names there were urban names consisting of owner’s first name and last names, accounting for as much as 72%. The remaining 28% contained names of animals, geographic names, names from history, mythology and religion, names related to their location, and names indicating business of a given company.