KLM vs. LOT vs. Divi Divi Air. Wat verbergt zich achter de namen van luchtvaartmaatschappijen in Polen en in het Nederlandse taalgebied?

Abstrakt

Boarding an aircraft, a passenger immediately enters into a different world and encounters a different culture. For this reason, airlines are often viewed as national symbols, which is oftentimes strengthened by their names e.g. Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij, Brussels Airlines, Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT or Air Aruba. However, there are also airlines whose names were created in a totally different way e.g. Transavia, Jetairfly or Bingo Airways. In this paper, I will make an attempt at providing the answer to the question of how the names of the airlines functioning in Poland and the Dutch-speaking territories were created and what influence the cultures of those countries had on this name-formation process. The major goal is thus to present the outcomes of a semantic analysis of the names of 113 Dutch, Belgian, Surinamese and Polish both contemporary and non-existent airlines. The study will also involve tracing the differences and similarities in the history of the formation of the names under analysis.