EN
In portraying their characters, writers often make use of the possibility offered by certain names having a recognizable meaning or a sound shape that evokes particular emotions or dispositions. Such names are generally called evocatives or, using Vilmos Tolnai's term, telling names. With respect to such names, Miklos Kovalovszky claims that they highlight a single main feature, but, due to their impoverished contents, they are incapable of providing a nuanced characterisation. They mostly have an ironical effect, therefore they occur primarily in comic genres; as a stylistic device, evocatives have exhausted their possibilities by now. - Telling names, indeed, have retreated into comic genres (today, they have a role primarily in parodies), the narrowing of their domain of use, however, resulted in a kind of functional renewal. Despite earlier views that play down their value, they have great hidden potentials. In the past decade, that recognition has been signalled by a tendency that pop groups, newspapers, and catering establishments have been given playful or pun-based names to an increasing extent, due to which circumstance telling names may reassume a more significant role in works of fiction in the near future.