On the basis of receptive and free association experiments were established peculiarities of perception of typical and creative names, the leading criteria for the recipients' perception were determined, and the criteria for evaluating a successful name were proposed. The identified criteria correlate with the principles and conditions for creating a successful name. Successful is the name, which, according to the results of the receptive experiment, assessed by the recipients in the positive part on most scales, while the motives, functions and purposes of the ergonym established at the generation stage, different for standard and non-standard names, are realized with the help of clear means of marking for native speakers of Russian; and according to the association analysis results, they contain semantic zones corresponding to the profile of the company activity and do not reveal sharply negative assessments and reactions associated with incomprehensibility.

The paper specifies the term "ergonym" and its place in the onomastic terminological system of the Russian language. A number of relevant studies performed by Russian linguists have allowed the author to conclude that there are no scientifically grounded criteria for distinguishing ergonyms from other varieties of onyms, i.e. urbanonyms, toponyms, chrematonyms, etc. The article introduces a complex definition of ergonym that distinguishes it from other types of onyms, in particular, from chrematonyms and ktematonyms. The author also specifies the difference between such concepts as ergonymy, ergonymics, and ergonymicon and clarifies the concept of ergonym through the business profiles of the enterprises described in the field of chrematonymy: marketing, public and ideological. The study features the field structure of the concept of ergonomics and describes the syntagmatic and paradigmatic, or genus-species (hyperonymic-hyponymic), relations of ergonyms in the terminological system of onomastics, as well as their systemic organization.

The article describes the data of an association experiment on the perception of various structural and semantic groups of composites, i.e. typical representatives of the most productive traditional vs creative methods, graphic representation, techniques and models of composition. Differences were found in the association fields of 'clear' and 'unclear' names concerning the prevailing types of reactions, the composition and number of semantic zones; as well as their correlation (or lack of the latter) with information about the actual company's activities. Assessment reactions or reflections about the linguistic phenomena themselves (structure models and components) were revealed in each of the analyzed association fields. The poles of the assessment of each name range from positive to sharply negative and also emotional. Reflection in the perception of company names is also manifested in the dialogue mode of reactions for unclear names and significant number of reactions to the structure of derived comples company names formed by unusual models. The incomprehensibility and unusualness of new names manifest in reaction-explanations, when respondents give detailed interpretations, and, thus, try to comprehend the unusual combination of components, structure and content representation (borrowings, transliterations, metagraphic tools). For incomprehensible names, the field core is formed by lower-order echolalic reactions or phonetic reactions.

The author studies the issue of complex word generation based on an integrative speech-thinking model of word production. The model reveals processes of words production on onomasiological, cognitive and word-forming level. The paper presents the results of studying complex words on the material of Novosibirsk city ergonyms with attributive semantics. Ergonyms, being the most actively enriched category of onyms for the recent decades, reflect general trends occurring in the language: use of different structure components in the composition of a complex word; various possibilities of language game: lexical, stylistic and graphic features of neologisms formation. The most