According to both onomastics and brand research, the name is the core of a brand – be it a product, service, corporation or a place. As branding a place, one can utilise the meanings and heritage already attached to the place name, but one can also strive for attaching a number of new cognitive and emotional meanings by creating narratives that shape people’s images about the place. (E.g. Brown 2016; Kostanski 2016; Sjöblom et al. 2016; Sjöblom – Hakala 2018.) Thus far, research has paid little attention to place names as a central part of the brand narrative.
The aim of this paper is to examine how place names are used for building images and feelings in marketing and branding tourist attractions. The data consists of web sites of the most important Finnish tourist attractions and slogans of Finnish municipalities. Theoretically, the study combines onomastics and brand research, and the methodological approach is rhetorical discourse analysis.