Phenomena Of Car Brands

            As we know that car is not a secondary need anymore. People compete to have the newest and the best car in the world. It influences car companies to produce many cars with more modern and more sophisticated cars than others. Besides of that, brand is the most important thing which must be concerned by the company to attract the buyer. Brand should describe the car as a whole. The function is to make the buyer understand well about the product that will be offered.

            According to Wikipedia, A brand is a name, term, design, or other feature that distinguishes one seller's product from those of others. The word "brand" derives from the Old Norse "brandr" meaning "to burn" - recalling the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products.

            This research is to analyze how the car companies mix the words to get the most interesting brand. I do this research by surfing the internet and reading the history of the company in creating their own brands. In Indonesia, there are various cars that are imported from other countries and sometimes they use their either own language or English as international language to be their brands. The readers should know the reason why the company use a certain brand, because the specification of the product will be known well by understanding the description which is interpreted from the brand itself. Most of those brands are word formations including compounding, acronyms, clipping, blending, eponyms and also hypocorisms that I will explain here.

Compounding in English

No	Brands	Word Formation
1	Crosshairs	Cross (N) + hairs (N)
2	Plymouth	Ply (N) + mouth (N)
3	Kingswood	Kings (N) + wood (N)
4	Statesman	States (N) + man (N)
5	Sunbird	Sun (N) + bird (N)
6	Wingroad	Wing (N) + road (N)
7	Fairlady	Fair (Adj) + lady (N)
8	Bluebird	Blue (Adj) + bird (N)
9	Wildcat	Wild (Adj) + cat (N)
10	Roadster	Road (N) + ster (N) : abbreviation from the word “sterling”
11	Bulldog	Bull (Adj) + dog (N)
12	Lightweight	Light (N) + weight (N)
13	4Runner	4: it may be “the number four”, but if it is real four, there should be “runners” to indicate the plural form. So, it tends to be “for” (P) + Runner (N)
14	Townace	Town (N) + ace (N)
15	Facelift	Face (N) + lift (N)
16	Skyline	Sky (N) + line (N)
17	Highlander	High (Adj) + lander (N)
18	Vanguard	Van (N) + guard (N)
19	Roadrunner	Road (N) + runner (N)
20	Hypersport	Hyper (Adj) + sport (N)

Compounding in Other Languages

No	Brands	Language	Word Formation
1	Mitsubishi	Japanese	Mitsu : tree (N) + hishi/bishi : water caltrop or water chestnut (N)
2	Volkswagen	Germanic	Volks : folks (N) + wagen : car (N)

Acronyms

No	Brands	Word Formation
1	BMW	Bayerische Motoren Werke (German) or Bavarian Motor Works (English)
2	SSC	Shelby Super Cars
3	Ractis	Run activity and space
4	Allion	All-in-one

Clippings

No	Brand	Meaning
1	Ster (in Roadster)	Ster is sterling
2	Veloz	Velocity

Blending

No	Brand	Word Form
1	Luxgen	Luxury genius

Eponyms

No	Brands	Founder
1	Honda	Soichiro Honda
2	PORSCHE	Ferdinand Porsche
3	CHEVROLET	Louis Chevrolet
4	Abarth	Carlo Abarth
5	Aston Martin	Lionel Martin ( from the Aston Hill speed hillclimb near Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire)
6	Bentley	Walter Owen Bentley
7	Bugatti	Ettore Bugatti
8	Renault	Louis Renault
9	Ferrari	Enzo Ferrari
10	Ford	Henry Ford
11	Holden	James Alexander Holden
12	Koenigsegg (Swedish : [ˈkøːnɪɡsɛɡ] and English : [ˈkʌnɪɡsɛɡ])	Christian von Koenigsegg
13	Lamborghini	Ferruccio Lamborghini
14	Cadillac	Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac
15	Lincoln	Abraham Lincoln
16	Morgan	Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan
17	Noble	Lee Noble
18	Panoz	Dan Panoz
19	Rolls-Royce	Henry Royce dan C.S. Rolls
20	Peugeot	Armant Peugeot

Hypocorisms

No	Brands	Hypocorisms
1	Chevrolet (pronounced /ˌʃɛvrəˈleɪ/ - Swedish )	Chevy (pronounced  /ˈʃɛvi/)

            Most of these car brands use compounding whose number is 22 (twenty two) brands, although two of them are in other languages or not in English. Eponym words are 20 (twenty) brands. There are 4 (four) acronyms, 2 (two) clippings, 1 (one) blending and 1 (one) hypocorism only. Actually, there are still many brands which I do not explain here because of the limitation of my research that must be contained 50 (fifty) brands.

a.       Compounding

            Compound word is a word that consists of two or more parts that make up one meaningful unit. It also can be meant as  words formed by combining roots, and the much smaller category of phrasal words. Compound word and phrasal word are quiet different eventhough those are formed by two the same words or more. Phrasal word is items whose structure as a phrase but its function is a word. To differentiate whether the word is compound or phrasal word, it can be distinguished by the identifying the stress pattern. Sometimes, the meaning of compound word can be detected easily by compounding the meaning of those two words, but sometimes it needs an adjustment to achieve the rightest meaning. In addition, it is because two words which are compounded in a word have a very different and unpredictable meaning.

            There are three types of compound words. They are compound verb, compound adjective and compound noun. Brand is a noun, so that I will explain compound noun only in this paper.  Compound noun itself is still divided into four types if the concentration is in the structure. They are verb-noun, noun-noun, adjective-noun and preposition-noun.

            All of those words are noun compound words that have the main stress in the left. Although they consist of adjective and preposition, but the function is the same, as a noun. Compound word contains of the head and its modifier. The head comes after the modifier and the modifier comes before the head. The head itself is a morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member. In the other hand, the function of the modifier, the word with the main stress, is to modify and to limit the specific meaning. So, those entire compound words are endocentric compounds that have the head and its modifier containing the basic meaning of the whole compound.

·         Compounding in English

Noun-noun compound words

No	Brands	Head	Modifier	Meaning
1	Plymouth	Mouth	Ply	The mouth which is in layer or a plied mouth
2	Kingswood	Wood	Kings	The  wood that kings have
3	Statesman	Man	States	A usually wise, skilled, and respected government leader
4	Sunbird	Bird	Sun	The wood of any of several tropical American leguminous trees; the wood of a Brazilian tree used especially for furniture
5	Wingroad	Road	Wing	The road that has wing
6	Roadster	Ster (sterling)	Road	A car that has two seats and a fabric top that folds back
7	Lightweight	Weight	Light	-   A fighter who is in a class of boxers weighing from 125 to 132 pounds (57 to 60 kilograms) -   Someone or something that does not weigh as much as others -   Someone or something that has little importance or power
8	Townace	Ace	Town	The ace which is in the town
9	Facelift	Lift	Face	-   Changes made to something to make it more attractive or modern -   By extension, any activity undertaken to renew, revamp, update, or improve the appearance of something
10	Skyline	Line	Sky	The outline of buildings, mountains, against the background of the sky
11	Vanguard	Guard	Van	-   The group of people who are the leaders of an action or movement in society, politics, art -   The soldiers, ships, that are at the front of a fighting force that is moving forward
12	Roadrunner	Runner	Road	A North American bird that lives in the desert and runs very fast
13	Crosshairs	Hairs	Cross	A very thin wire or thread that is seen when you look into a microscope or telescope and that is used for precisely viewing or aiming at something

·         Compounding in Other Languages

Noun-noun compound words

No	Brands	Head	Modifier	Meaning
1	Volkswagen	Wagen	Volks	Car of populace or citizenry

Adjective-noun compound words

No	Brands	Head	Modifier	Meaning
1	Fairlady	Lady	Fair	A beautiful or fair lady
2	Bluebird	Bird	Blue	A small North American bird that is mostly blue with a blue, brown. Or orange belly
3	Wildcat	Cat	Wild	A kind of cat that lives in the wilderness
4	Bulldog	Dog	Bull	A short, strong, muscular dog with short hair, short legs, and a wide square head
5	Highlander	Lander	High	An inhabitant of a highland
6	Hypersport	Sport	Hyper	A very active sport

Preposition-noun compound word

No	Brands	Head	Modifier	Meaning
1	4runner (for runner)	Runner	4 (for)	Something that is given for the runner

On the table above, there are 13 (thirteen) noun-noun compound words in English and 2 (two) in Japanese and German, 6 (six) adjective-noun compound words, and 1 (one) preposition-noun compound word only. All of them have the same head in the right word and the same modifier in the left word.

Compound word is not only in English but also in other languages, such as Japanese, Germanic, and so on. Some of compound words above can be interpreted easily and some of them have a very different meaning of the two words that compound it. For instance roadrunner, the noun-noun compound word, is not a runner in the certain road as the real meaning, but a North American bird that lives in the desert and runs very fast. That brand tends to show a symbol that describes a product. The symbol of a product can be an interesting and important thing to be considered as I have explained before. Symbol can be either a picture or a word, especially compound words which are used by the most companies in the world.

I have marked several items with red colour that are needed to be explained further because of its different form from others. They are:

1.     –s morphemes in kings, states, hairs  in the final words are to show the plural form of those nouns. Morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that carries a meaning. This –s morpheme is a kind of a derivational morpheme that changes the meaning. Because it is a plural morpheme of noun, so the noun itself is not a single noun but the number is more than one.

2.     Ster in the roasdter is an abbreviation which has meaning sterling or silver that is 92 percent pure. It is kind of clipping that I will explain the next.

3.     4 in 4runner tends to have meaning “for” rather than “four”. Those two words are homophone. Homophone is a word that is pronounced like another word but is different in meaning, origin, or spelling. In addition, if 4 here has the real meaning, there should be a plural form with –s morpheme after the word runner (or in the final word). So, it can be proven clearly that  4 here is “for” as a preposition not “four” as a number.

b.      Acronyms

Acronym is a word formed from the first letters of each one of the words in a phrase. Nowadays, there are many acronyms that Indonesian people use in daily activity, such as KEPO (Knowing Every Particular Object) and LOL (Laugh Out Loud or Laughing Out Loud). The function is to make a phrase shorter and can be reminded easily.  For a brand, acronym can be an interesting and useful choice to make the product more glamour. BMW is well-known brand. That acronym comes from German, Bayerische Motoren Werke or Bavarian Motor Works in English. The export of a product from one country to another country may change the original brand, but most of them are translated in English, as international language. The benefit is to facilitate the marketing of the product itself. Another example of car brand that uses acronym is SSC or Shelby Super Cars. Both of BMW and SSC keep the capital letter because they just use the first or initial letter in each word. In the other hand, many acronyms do not use any capital letter, for instance ractis or run activity and space and allion or all-in-one. Although these acronyms do not use capital letter, they are still called acronym because the structures use the initial letter or the first syllable only.

c.       Clipping

The element of reduction that is noticeable in blending is even more apparent in the process described as clipping. Clipping is divided into 3 types; they are initial clipping (retaining the final part), medial clipping (deleting the middle part) and final clipping (retaining the beginning part). I find two clippings in these brands; those are ster from word sterling and veloz from velocity. Although veloz is ended with –z, it is still called clipping because both of them retain the beginning part only. So, they are the final clippings.

d.       Blending

The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also presented in the process or the fusion of two words into one called blending. Usually, the form is the first part of one word with the last part of another word, but the blending that I will explain here is a combination both of the initial syllable or the first part of two words. That is luxgen from luxury and genius. That blending uses the initial syllable, lux and gen. So that is called initial blending.

e.       Eponym

New words based on the name of a person or a place is called eponyms. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, eponym is one for whom or which something that is believed to be named. Actually, there are many companies use the name of the founder, a place, or their favourite figure to be their brands.

Eponyms that the most company uses are the last name of the founders, such as Honda from Soichiro Honda, Ferrari from Enzo Ferrari, Lamborghini from Ferruccio Lamborghini, and so on. Sometimes, they combine the last name of the founder with a name of the place, like Aston Martin from Lionel Martin and from the Aston Hill speed hillclimb near Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. They also combine the last name of the two founders, for instance Rolls-Royce from Henry Royce and C.S. Rolls. Cadillac is inspired by the name of an explorer from French in the 17th century, Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac.

f.       Hypocorisms

A particular type of reduction, favoured in Australian and British English, produces forms technically known as hypocorisms. The function is to reduce a longer word into a single syllable with final –y or –ie. Here, there is one example only of hypocorisms. It is Chevrolet (pronounced /ˌʃɛvrəˈleɪ/ - Swedish) to be Chevy (pronounced /ˈʃɛvi/).

From data and analysis above, the conclusion is that morphology as the branch of linguistics has the most important role in advertising. The reason is because many companies actually use linguistics items such as word formation to support their product. Word formations that usually they use are compounding, acronyms, clipping, blending, eponyms and also hypocorisms. Compounding can be the most favourite choice to create a brand. It may be because compounding is the most interesting way to describe their product. Most of them are solid or closed compound nouns, because there is no hyphen or any space that connects those two word. After compound word, eponym is the second choice to many companies to make a brand. So, they are not only offer their product, but they actually want to be a well-known founder. Therefore, public will remember the brand of the product and the founder also. There are many ways that companies do to make their product famous. Many car brands in Indonesia use English, because we have not afforded yet to produce car ourselves. Although some of Indonesian schools have made several cars, but the materials are still imported from another country.

References:

-          Yule, George. “The Study of Language.” 4th ed. Cambridge University Press. Print.

-          “Compound (linguistics).” Wikipedia Online. 11 Jun. 2015. Web. 14 Jun. 2015.                 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)>.

-          “Daftar merek mobil.” 8 Jun. 2015. Web. 14 Jun. 2015.               <http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daftar_merek_mobil>.

-          “Brand.” 11 Jun. 2015. Web. 15 Jun. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Brand>.