On the Old and New Names of Exotic Fruits

The names of exotic plants and their fruits are a small but very interesting lexical category. In the contemporary explanatory dictionaries, it is not uncovered completely and systematically: obviously obsolete words (pomeranus, sycómorus) are included, while many contemporary and common words (lime, passion fruit) are absent, which is explained by extralinguistic reasons. The rapid change in life (for example, such areas as trade, travel, electronic communication) brings to life the need to name the objects of everyday reality. There is a lot of these names in the dictionaries of foreign words, encyclopedias and reference books. Their spelling is codifi ed by an orthographic dictionary. However, native speakers are not always aware of this fact and use different means, including repeated and new borrowings from popular sources or real communication, often multilingual (e.g. for one plant: strastocvet, passifl ora, grenadilla, marakuiya, passionfruit). The gap between scientifi c discourse (both botanical and linguistic) and everyday communication leads to the appearance of parallel versions of the names, inclu ding erroneous ones (mangostan / mangustan / mangosteen) that are replicated by mass media, social networks etc. and lead to new mistakes.