Algérian Pharmaceutical Brand Names: Word-Formation Processes and Semantics Motivations

Abstract

This article examines the morphological processes and semantic motivations involved in the formation of pharmaceutical brand names in Algeria. The central question is to identify which formal mechanisms and meaning strategies are favoured by national companies, in a context where naming must both guide product interpretation and ensure brand distinctiveness. The corpus comprises 127 denominations collected from the official websites of Biopharm and Merinal, considered representative of national pharmaceutical production and/or marketing. Each item was described according to the “final process” criterion (the dominant operation in the resulting form) and then subjected to a two-level analysis: (i) lexical morphology, distinguishing in particular compounding, affixation, truncation and arbitrary creation; and (ii) semantic analysis based on the endocentric/exocentric contrast and on naming patterns (descriptive, actantial, associative and appellative). Quantifying the categories and identifying lexical bases makes it possible to describe the naming trends observed in the corpus and to pave the way for inter-operator comparisons. The results reveal a clear predominance of compounding and suffixation over arbitrary creation, whereas prefixation, syncope, blending, hybridisation, parasynthesis, apocope and rearrangement play only a marginal role. At the

semantic level, endocentric denominations largely dominate, indicating a strong tendency towards referential readability. Pattern distribution confirms the primacy of the appellative scheme, followed by the associative, descriptive and actantial schemes. Overall, these observations delineate modern commercial onomastics that articulates signals of specialisation with brand differentiation. The study thus provides an empirical contribution to pharmaceutical onomastics in the Algerian context, while noting the limitations of a corpus based on online catalogues and opening prospects for extending the corpus and assessing LASA risks among health professionals and patients.