The Green Corpus: A Study of Vegan and Vegetarian Product Names

Abstract

Vegan and vegetarian brands exhibit ingenuity through word formation processes to signal vegetal origin. This paper analyzes a manually compiled corpus of 563 product names from 55 brands to identify the orthographic, morphological, and semantic devices used to navigate regulatory pressures while achieving market distinctiveness. By examining these linguistic mechanisms, the study explores how naming strategies communicate that products are meatless alternatives while preserving consumer appeal. The findings reveal five primary conceptual strategies, indicating a varying degree of similarity to animal-based counterparts: (1) approximate identity, achieved through vowel-based orthographic alteration and unorthodox spellings (e.g., cheeze); (2) negation and absence, utilizing compounding and negative suffixation (e.g., no-pork, fishless); (3) conceptual hybridization, effected via linguistic blending (e.g., soyrizo); (4) positive valence, employing positively connotated words (e.g., ultimate); and (5) equivalence, established through constructions denoting sameness (e.g., just like). Ultimately, these devices not only serve as innovative mechanisms to communicate the product’s plant-based nature but also help bypass legal nomenclature restrictions while contributing to the introduction of novelty, creativity, and “spiciness” to Modern English.