Anglicismos coloquiales en la toponimia española

Abstract

Abstract English is the source of many of the colloquial, unofficial names we use for towns, cities, regions and the like in Spain today. Yet, due to the special (some might even say marginal) linguistic status of proper names and the ever-changing, fluid nature of informal Spanish, the importance and extent of this particular kind of influence of English on the Spanish lexicon have gone unnoticed in studies on Anglicisms. Based on a corpus of European Spanish tweets containing colloquial alternatives for traditional place names, this article examines some two hundred unconventional toponyms borrowed from or somehow inspired by English. Not surprisingly, only a few of these toponyms qualify as genuine Anglicisms. Most are faux-English pronunciations, spellings or names translated, often quite badly, from Spanish. The inherent oddity and humour of these loanwords, be they authentic or faux, hinge on an incongruity between their anglicised forms and the cultural affiliation of their referents and serve to create a sense of social closeness between participants in conversation.