Maria-Lucreția Cazac, Eugen Munteanu
Abstract: In Romanian language, we can identifiy a competition between scientific and popular names for the designation of various diseases. Scientific names are used by specialists in rigorous medical treatises, also in technical oral discourse. Regarding the simple speakers, they resort to popular names, the notion of linguistic taboo being the cause of avoiding the name of the disease. On the one hand, there may be a lack of knowledge of the name by the speaker, and on the other hand, the conscious avoidance of the use of a certain name is based on the strong fear of not contacting that disease.