Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names

Abstract

Proper names are generally considered as a specific category of nouns. Research may focus on their specificities, but also, in the opposite perspective, on what they share with common nouns. Are proper names, like the former, subject to metaphor and metonymy? After an overview of the characteristics of names and what they share with common nouns, the semantic relations present in metaphor and metonymy are examined, and in particular the source-target relations of metonymy and their taxonomies like those of Peirsman & Geeraerts [2006] and Pepper [2020]. The presence of the tropes is then investigated in antonomasia and three categories of onomastic data, nicknames, place-names and surnames, and their presence appears as frequent and diverse, which answers the above question. The 36 metonymic relations detected are grouped within the two taxonomies, which shows that some general categories have affinities with proper nouns and also confirms the value of multiple-level taxonomies.

Keywords

• proper names
• metaphor
• metonymy
• antonomasia