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Currently, medicine is focusing not only on the physical health of people, but also on various psychological and social factors of modern life. In addition, general public uses medical terminology in everyday life. Medical terminology is characterized by the frequent use of eponymous terms that contain a proper name or a common noun derived from it, which is of a particular interest for linguists and specialists in the field of onomastics and cultural linguistics, since the study of this lexical layer allows to find in a term, in addition to linguistic, also cultural information. The aim of the work is to study the features of the influence of the linguocultural context on the formation of eponymous terms — names of syndromes in the field of neurology and psychiatry. Practical material is taken from MedicineNet.com. The portal has been in operation since 1996, and the doctors involved in its development are the authors of the Webster’s New World ™ Medical Dictionary. The article provides information on the study of eponymous terms in Russia, as well as a cognitive-functional study of the names of neurological and psychiatric syndromes containing an eponymous component.

Eponymous terminology plays an important role in medicine: it is impossible to imagine an area of study in which there would not be used compound terms with an onomastic component or common nouns derived from onyms. Nevertheless, there is an ambiguous attitude towards eponymous terms in the scientific community. From the point of view of displaying linguistic and cultural-historical information, the most important function which is realized in the eponymous terms with an anthroponomic core is the commemorative function. The aim of this study is to analyze the commemorative function of the eponymous terms of clinical neurosciences (neurology and psychiatry). Practical material is taken from MedicineNet.com. During the study, using the method of continuous sampling, 155 eponymous terms were selected. The study made it possible to identify the following problems of the current state of the terminological system of neurology and psychiatry: the use of patients’ surnames as an eponymous component of the term along with the surnames of doctors; inaccuracy of information about the history of the study of diseases associated with the perpetuation in terms of the names of doctors who are not pioneers; the presence in the terminology of negatively colored onyms associated with the ideologists and accomplices of Nazism.