SEELANGS Digest - 23 Feb 2006 to 24 Feb 2006 - Special issue (#2006-65)

[STEPHENBPEARL at CS.COM]

I would be grateful if any SEELANGER[s] out there could throw some light on 
the following dark place.

       Like all major European languages, Russian is quite hospitable to 
abstract nouns formed from a proper name plus the suffix "-ism", "marksism, 
leninism etc.

       At a certain point in various languages, when the perception of the 
first element as a proper name has waned, these words may cease to be 
capitalised. The O.E.D. gives "chauvinism", "mesmerism " and, of course, that grand old 
Russian word "hooliganism", while awarding the majuscule to "Leninism". et al. 
Russian does not appear to make this distinction.

       Two questions: 1) Does this word formation go back as far as the mid 
or early 19th. century in Russian?

                              2) Does Russian have any tradiiton of 
formations like "Spoonerism" or "Malapropism" where a particular idiosyncracy or 
eccentricity  of an individual, real or fictional, is caricatured. If so, how far 
does this go back.

       Examples welcome.

       PS. I would guess that in the case of Russian, many otherwise worthy 
candidates for ""ism"ification,  might be ruled out on gounds of euphony- or 
rather cacophony. I don't know whether either Lenin or Stalin had an eye to this 
kind of immortality when they abandoned their original names, but it is hard 
to imagine generations of Soviet students having to grind their way through 
mandatory courses of "ulyanovism - dzhugashviliism".

       Examples welcome. 

       

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