On Allusive Place Names in Italian Idioms
On Allusive Place Names in Italian Idioms

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the function of allusive place names in Italian idioms, which convey derivational and semantic allusions. The material was excerpted from a variety of monolingual dictionaries of the Italian language as well as dictionaries of idioms and other phraseographic works and bilingual ones (Italian-Polish, Italian-English). The names of authentic and non-authentic places were included in the corpus composed of 31 units. The majority of the names are those of cities, towns and villages. The most important functions of the onomastic components are the following: eumphemistic, axiological, humorous. Most of the components discussed are culturally conditioned elements. The majority of onomastic components are re-interpreted etymologically in the unit. The idioms analyzed tend to be marked stylistically. They appear mostly in the spoken language. Therefore, such units are particularly difficult to translate into another language.

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