A Cognitive Approach in Onomastics: Some Notes on Metaphorical Place-Names

Abstract

In the framework of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is considered as a general cognitive mechanism that plays a fundamental role in human thinking and understanding, in the creation of our social, cultural, and psychological reality, while also impacting our language use. One of its special types, the image metaphor, also appears in name-giving and serves as the basis of a specific toponym type. With reference primarily to Hungarian toponymic corpus and, sporadically, to other languages, this paper provides a brief description of the mechanism of image metaphor and an overview of typical target concepts and source domains of metaphorical toponyms and of the features of the geographical objects that constitute the basis for metaphorical mappings. It is shown that metaphorical naming may be based on transonymization and involve enantiosemy that helps create irony. The fact that metaphorical place-names are most frequently documented when collecting unofficial toponymy has a significant impact on their status in onomastic research. Being most often microtoponyms, metaphorical place-names display clear quantitative variation from one area to another, which can be explained by the weight the metaphorical naming patterns have among the speakers living in different regions, which, in turn, may influence their readiness to use those or similar patterns for naming new objects. The author also suggests that despite their numerical scarcity in historical sources, metaphorical toponyms constitute a long-standing ancient class of names, and outlines some perspectives for the further study.

Keywords

• toponym
• metaphorical name-giving
• image metaphor
• target concept
• source domain
• mapping
• cognitive linguistics