Kakzanova Yevgenia M.

The article deals with term-formation potentials of mineralogical eponyms in the light of cognitive term-formation. It is concluded that most mineralogical eponyms are monosyllabic terms formed by suffixation. The suffixes can be either simple or complex but the structure of mineralogical eponyms remains unchanged when translated into other languages. 30 termformation models are considered in detail; these models are divided into three main groups: name + surname (14 models), surname only (9 models) and name only (7 models). The author introduces the concept of eponymlike terms and separates two mineralogical eponyms formed by means of compounding. 82 prefixes for the formation of mineralogical eponyms are considered: prefixes representing a dominant chemical element and Greek words representing the prefixes.