Du sildenafil citrate au Viagra® ou l’art délicat de nommer les médicaments
In times past, drugs often derived from plants and were quite naturally named after them. Nowadays, considering the significant economic issues at stake (Dutchen 2009), pharmaceutical companies increasingly entrust brand agencies with the naming of their products (Kenagy 2001). In this article, we offer to analyze the names of some brand and generic drugs, exploiting the French VIDAL dictionary, the British National Formulary and the US FDA corpora, with the aim to bring to light the evolution of lexical trends over the last century. Whilst doing so, we wish to demonstrate that, in the field of pharmacology, the process of naming is nowadays not so much underlain by a legitimate need for clarity and scientificity but rather by marketing strategies some of which prove to be misleading for patients. Considering the now international dimension of the pharmaceutical industry, drug names are often the same around the world. Yet, there are exceptions, which we point out and explain. Furthermore, we deemed interesting to underline the extent to which medicines are part of our everyday life by pointing out nicknames that patients tend to give to their treatments — usually sedatives, neuroleptics and the like — and metaphors they may resort to in English and in French. We conclude with the acknowledgement that medicines are henceforth like any other goods, whose financial stakes are such that, besides developing forceful new names, the pharmaceutical industry goes so far as inventing new diseases (disease mongering) to increase its market share (Even and Debré 2012).
Article language: French
References
Bonah, Christian, and Anne Rasmussen
2005 Histoire et médicament: Aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Paris: Glyphe Editions.
Bouché, Pascal
1994 Les mots de la médecine. Paris: Belin.
Brand Institute
2013 (
[URL]). Consulté le 30 mars 2013.
Casapalmera
2012 (
[URL]). Consulté le 12 mai 2014.
Dachez, Roger
2012 Histoire de la médecine: De l’Antiquité à nos jours. Paris: Tallandier.
Dirckx, John
1983 The Language of Medicine, its Evolution, Structure and Dynamics. New York: Praeger.
DSM-V
2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Arlington: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Dutchen, Stephanie
2009 “
A Drug by any other Name.”
Scope (
[URL]). Consulté le 4 décembre 2012.
Etymonline
2013 (
[URL]). Consulté le 16 mai 2013.
Even, Philippe, and Bernard Debré
2012 Guide des 4000 médicaments utiles, inutiles ou dangereux. Paris: Le Cherche Midi.
Food and Drug Administration
2013 (
[URL]). Consulté le 12 mai 2013.
Faure, Pascaline
2012 L’anglais médical et le français médical: analyse linguistico-culturelle et modélisations didactiques. Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines.
Gangwal, Amit, and Ankit Gangwal
2011 “
Naming of Drug Molecules and Pharmaceutical Brands.”
Journal of Current Pharmaceutical Research 7 (1): 1–5.
Gundersen, Linda
1998 “The Complex Process of Naming Drugs.” Annals of Internal Medicine 129 (8): 677–678.
Homehealth-uk
2012 (
[URL]). Consulté le 12 mai 2014.
Kenagy, John
2001 “Naming, Labeling, and Packaging of Pharmaceuticals.” American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy 58 (21): 2033–2041.
Koven, Suzanne
2012 “
How are drugs named?”. (
[URL]). Consulté le 5 août 2012.
McNeil, Donald
2003 “The Science of Naming Drugs.” The New York Times, ‘Variations on Vital’, December 27th. (
[URL]). Consulté le 7 mars 2012.
New York Times
2012 (
[URL]). Consulté le 15 novembre 2012.
NumberQuest
2012 (
[URL]). Consulté le 12 mai 2014.
Revue Prescrire
2004 24 (252): 501. (
[URL]). Consulté le 13 février 2013.
(de) Roquefort, Jean-Baptiste-Bonaventure
1808 Glossaire de la langue romane. Paris: B. Warée.
Stepney, Rob
2010 “
A Dose by any other Name Would not Sell as Sweet.”
British Medical Journal 3411: c6895.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Toupin, Fabienne
2018.
Practitioner from Instrument: Metonymy in Names for Physicians in the History of English.
Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies :27/2
► pp. 103 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.