The aim of article is to show the conceptual system state of phytonymics, a currently emerging onomatology direction, whose tasks are a multi-aspect study of plant proprietary names. The article substantiates the inclusion of selection agro-nomenclature in the circle of phytonyms, introduces the term pragmaрhytonym for such names, raises the question of the need to develop hyponyms for it. The material for the work was provided by terminological industry reference books and linguistic studies on onomastic topics, dedicated to the problems of phytolexicon. Рhytonyms in a strictly special meaning ("names of individual plants"), such as the Tree of the Dead, the Del Norte Titan, are the rarest type of onyms. This is explained in the article by the fact that from the composition of other types of bionyms (zoonyms, anthroponyms) these are distinguished by their inanimate nature and, as a consequence, the absence of the need to perform a vocative function. The conducted analysis showed the development interdependence of special names for objects of flora and fauna (zoonym – phytonym, faunonym – floronym) due to the connection of these elements of the natural world in the consciousness of any culture bearers. Both pairs of basic terms are characterized by polysemy, generated by the term element -onym, which participates in the formation of fundamentally different categories of specialized vocabulary. One includes proper terms (toponym, cosmonym), the other contains linguistics terms for nominal vocabulary (antonym, paronym), and both groups are constantly replenished (gluttonym "name of a food product", karonym "name of a ship", coloronym "name of a color", linguonym "name of a language, dialect, colloquialism", etc.). The development of phytonymics into a full-fledged section of the proper names science should be facilitated by expanding the range of research objects, which should include varietal names of cultivated plants. In this case, the bearers of the name are objects of a special kind, occupying a middle (intermediate) position between objects of natural and artificial formation. Such duality is akin to some chrematonyms – names of precious stones, gold nuggets, large pearls, etc. They owe their origin to nature, but the fact of discovery, extraction, and functional purpose act as a product of human activity. They are similar to other sets of artificially created homogeneous objects (pragmatonyms) in the form, semantics, and pragmatics of names. The aboveserves as the basis for identifying pragmaphytonyms as a special type in the composition of phytonyms and pragmatonyms. The emergence of works, proving the specificity of certain classes of varietal names against the background of others, will contribute to the formation of genus-specific phytoterminology and the development of phytonymics in general.
Starikova et al. (Wed,) studied this question.