FABRIC VESTONYMS: TEXTILE NAMES DERIVED FROM GEOGRAPHICAL TOPONYMS

This article examines fabric vestonyms — names of textiles that derive from geographical proper names, such as the names of cities, regions, or countries. Many fabric names that have become ordinary common nouns in modern usage are in fact linked to cities situated along ancient trade routes, most notably the Silk Road. The article analyzes the origin of words such as jeans (Genoa), muslin (Mosul), calico (Calicut), angora (Ankara), shantung (Shandong), gauze (Gaza), tulle (the town of Tulle), and cambric (Cambrai). It further considers the general linguistic mechanisms underlying this process — deonymization, semantic broadening, and phonetic adaptation upon borrowing into other languages — and draws comparisons with corresponding phenomena in the Uzbek language.