Patterns and Naming of the Food Shops on Rattanakosin Island: The Ethnosemantic Analysis

Abstract

This research paper presents the patterns and naming of the food shops on Rattanakosin Island through ethnosemantic analysis. This work is qualitative in nature. The structures and elements of the food shops’ names are analyzed to find some generalized rules. The frequency of patterns and head elements are calculated to investigate the views reflected from naming of the food shops on Rattanakosin Island. The data are 134 names of the food shops on Rattanakosin Island. The findings show that there are two elements of the names of the food shops on Rattanakosin Island: head and modifier, both before and after head. The structures of the food shops’ names on Rattanakosin Island can be concluded as the generalized rule: (modifier before head) + head + (modifier 1 after head) + (modifier 2 after head) + (modifier 3 after head). The most common pattern found is the pattern with only the head element (35.82%). The patterns beginning with the head are found more than those starting with the modifier, and the patterns with fewer modifiers are found more than those with more modifiers. As for the head elements, there are 7 groups of names: people names, food names, place names, abbreviation, foreign languages, names with the meaning related to food, and names with other meanings. From the study, food names are mostly found to be the head (29.85%). The results of the study reflect two values and aspects of worldview, namely the simplicity reflected from the most frequently used pattern, and the accessibility reflected from naming of the food names as the head element.