Character names in English-language cartoons and the specifics of their rendering into Russian

The research aims to identify the specific features of character names in English-language cartoons and the methods of their translation into Russian. The article is dedicated to cartoon character names as a special group of onyms, analyzing their specific features and the difficulties associated with their rendering from English into Russian. The research is novel in that it is the first one to describe and systematize charactonyms in English-language cartoons according to semantic features, to identify the difficulties of their rendering into Russian, and to propose ways to overcome the translation difficulties. The research findings showed that the vast majority of character names in English-language cartoons are charactonyms, they carry additional information about the character traits, appearance, profession, socio-economic status, and other characteristics of the referents. Having a fictional nature and being the product of the authors’ word creation, these lexical units often present difficulties for translation. Based on the analyzed material, using methods of translatological and quantitative analysis, the most frequent and effective ways of rendering character names from English-language cartoons into Russian have been identified and described.