The Functional Value of Proper Nouns in Medical Texts

Abstract

Medical terminology is the professional language of those who are directly or indirectly engaged in the art of healing. Medical texts contain a lot of Greek and Latin borrowings, metaphoric usages of some terms and also term-eponyms. Health and care professionals need good communication skills to develop positive relationships and share information with people using linguistic varieties. Medical eponyms are often attached to the people who made the discovery. Term-eponyms can have both negative and positive overtones. They are a source of social communication and cognitively and culturally oriented. It can be stated that term-eponyms realize a cognitive function derived from the sphere they belong to.