Metonymic namegiving from a cognitive perspective
Metonymic namegiving from a cognitive perspective

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on metonymic toponyms relying on the findings of cognitive metonymy studies. In this framework, metonymy is seen as a cognitive process used for conceptualization, in which one conceptual entity (the source) provides mental access to another conceptual entity (the target). Proper names are also involved in cognitive metonymy research but only metonymic use of proper names has been examined. Places, however, may appear in metonymic processes also as target entities, i.e., as the object to be referred to. In such cases a unique spatial object is named by referring to a contiguous thing using its common noun or proper name denomination. After a brief introduction into the cognitive theory of metonymy, the paper provides an overview and a reinterpretation of the results of onomastic research along the main conceptual schemes of metonymic place namegiving. The overview of metonymic schemes reveals that a large part of the associations in toponyms are used specifical¬ly for the creation of elements of this proper name type and their linguistic realiza¬tion occurs partly differently than in the case of common noun metonymy. It is also emphasized that there may be significant differences between languages in terms of the linguistic realization of the different metonymic schemes: a) without any formal change in the linguistic form of the designation of the source entity, b) with formants or c) lexical elements attached. In this respect, the characteristics of the language and the impact of the already existing metonymic toponyms are decisive. Therefore, all metonymically-motivated names need to be considered to gain more nuanced insights into how the mechanism of metonymy manifests itself in namegiving. By reinterpreting metonymic namegiving within the framework of cognitive metonymy theory, we also expand our knowledge on the cognitive mechanism of metonymy.

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