Lexis

Journal in English Lexicology 

20 | 2022
Proper names and the lexicon

Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper

names
Pierre J.L. Arnaud

Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/6617
DOI: 10.4000/lexis.6617
ISSN: 1951-6215

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Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3
 

Electronic reference
Pierre J.L. Arnaud, “Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names”, Lexis [Online], 20 | 2022,
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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 1

Metaphor, metonymy and the

nounness of proper names
Pierre J.L. Arnaud

Introduction
1 The range of “named entities”, i.e. entities that are referred to by a proper name, is an
immense one. Beyond the obvious personal entities: humans, gods, fairies, etc., or
spatial entities: constellations, oceans, towns, etc., we can give names to such diverse
things as, to quote just a few categories, trees (Yggdrasil, General Sherman), geysers (Old
Faithful, Pohutu), storms (Andrew), British locomotives (Puffing Billy, Mallard), trains (the
Flying Scotsman, the Broadway Limited), tank types (the Sherman, the Centurion), swords
(Excalibur, Durandal), instruments and machines (Hubble, the Large Hadron Collider),
schools of thought and theories (Prototype Theory), intellectual constructions (the
Thucydides Trap), institutions (Meals on Wheels, Amnesty International), etc. An obvious
direction for linguistic enquiry is to determine how proper names fit in the class of
nouns. This article aims at answering an aspect of this question by looking at the
presence of metaphor and metonymy in data from antonomasia and onomastics. The
first section will consider in a broad perspective the linguistic characteristics of the
class of proper names, and the second one will introduce the essentials of metaphor
and metonymy necessary for their study in names. The rest of the article will present
examples of both tropes and attempt a classification of the categories of metonymies
detected. English examples will be used, with occasional additions from French and
other Western European languages.

1. The nounness of proper names

2 The fact that proper names can be heads of noun phrases and perform functions of
common nouns is in part proof of their nominal status. However, they constitute a
specific subclass of nouns in syntactic and semantic terms and, given the range of

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 2

possible named entities, we cannot expect the subcategory to be homogeneous: there is

“a grammatically relevant cline from more to less typical types of names” (Van
Langendonck & Van de Velde [2016]). For instance, a number of proper names quoted
in the Introduction take the definite article while others do not. An extensive literature
about the syntactic behaviour of proper names is available (see e.g. Quirk et al.
[1972: 123-203], Gary-Prieur [1994], Huddleston & Pullum [2002: 323-524], Vaxelaire
[2005], Van Langendonck [2007], Van Langendonck & Van de Velde [2016]), into which
it is not necessary to delve given the focus of this article. A useful notion from Van
Langendonck [2007: 96] is that of the proprial lemma, a lexical unit which manifests
itself in occurrences that may be prototypical proper names as well as their semantic
avatars in certain functions and constructions, as in It’s the poor man’s Palm Beach, the
Athens of the North, or else occur as common nouns in occurrences like He drove a Ford.
3 Semantically, nouns are the names of things, and the prototypical thing is an object, i.e.
a concrete entity with an outside surface. Many of the categories of named entities
listed in the Introduction, including humans, are in this sense objects, and in this
respect, therefore, proper names are not different from common nouns. There are
aspects of proper names, however, in which differences appear, and these have been
the object of considerable attention. Vaxelaire [2009], however, considers that the
investigation of the semantics of proper names has been influenced by the “hegemony
of logic”, whose aims are not identical to those of linguistics. Here again, an extensive
literature survey is not necessary and the reader is referred to the general treatises
mentioned above, plus Nyström [2016], and I will only briefly state the view I take of
the meaning of proper names. It is necessary for that to distinguish denotation, i.e. the
link between a lexeme and the concept it names, and reference, which is the link
between an occurrence of a lexeme and the representation of an entity of the world
(real, fictional, mental) mentally present in a given discourse situation. (Gary-Prieur
[1994: 244] speaks of a “relation discursive à un individu” [a discourse relation to an/one
individual]). In the case of common nouns, reference results, with the help of devices
like definiteness and deixis, from the identification of the entity as an exemplar of the
category present in the concept, therefore an act of reference is a sort of hypostasis of
denotation. This is where semantic differences appear between common nouns and
proper names. The concept that represents an individual human or a given place is not
a categorial concept, since it represents a unique entity. Uniqueness may be absent,
however, as in the case of namesakes, when the mind has several concepts which
include, or connect with, information about the different homonymous named entities.
This is why we can say “I know of two Tom Jones”. A consequence of the non-categorial
nature of the concept denoted by a proper name is that we cannot produce a definition
of the name, or we cannot say “*What does Tom Jones mean?”, contrary to the case of
common nouns. Does the impossibility of defining a proper name or asking about its
meaning indicate that it lacks linguistic meaning, but only points at an individual
entity and provides a connection with the relevant encyclopaedic information? We
should first remember that in Cognitive Linguistics encyclopaedic and linguistic
information are not conceived of as separate (Langacker [1987: 147; 1997]) and the
difference is only a matter of activation in the context. Also, some proper names do
have a minimal amount of categorial meaning: a name like, say, Annabel Lee tells us that
its bearer is female, and the Irish origin revealed by a surname like Mulcahy is not a
piece of extra-semantic information. Connotation, defined as the evaluative effect a
lexical unit produces, is not absent, either. If a piece of land in the Los Angeles Basin,

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 3

where holly does not grow, was called Hollywood by its developer, it is presumably
because he found the name “pleasant”. In France, Boulevard Lénine 1 does not make for a
prestigious address. Vaxelaire [2009] quotes the example of Lipton tea which was
rebranded as Thomas Lipton, presumably in a marketing ploy to humanize the company
name by evoking the person behind the product. However, as stated above, the lexical-
semantic content of proper names is in any case minimal in comparison to that of
common nouns.
4 If the syntax and semantics of proper names have been extensively discussed, less
attention has been devoted to their morphology. In this respect, they do not differ
greatly from common nouns (apart, of course, from the use of initial capitals in their
spelling – if we consider capitalization as being within the purport of morphology).
• They can be inflected: the Joneses, Mary’s surname.
• They are subject to denominal derivation: Marxist, Napoleonic, Lilliputian, pasteurize, (to) de-
Tucker Carlson.2
• They form coordinative compounds: Burne-Jones, Baden-Powell, Rolls-Royce, Austria-Hungary.
• They are modifiers in subordinative compounds: Bowie knife, Davy lamp, Jack Russell terrier,
Portland stone, Bath bun. They also occur as heads in compound names, attributive like Flash
Gordon, Hurricane Hazel3-4 or relational like Buffalo Bill, Tin Lizzie, Typhoid Mary. Etymologically,
many British place-names were compounds of common nouns and some are still
recognizable as such, like Saltford or Stonehaven.
• They can take on affixoids: Monicagate, Megxit, Trumpageddon.
• Blending is possible: Gerrymander, Reaganomics, Peterloo, Bennifer, Calexico, Pyonghattan.
• They can be shortened: Will, Nick, Frisco, Gitmo (<< Guantánamo).
• They can undergo conversion: (to) lynch, boycott, hoover, miranda.
5 To conclude this section, proper names are indeed nouns, in spite of certain specific
characteristics. Although metaphor and metonymy also affect verbs and adjectives,
they primarily apply to nouns. Does the nounness of proper names extend to their
susceptibility to metaphor and metonymy? The following section is a very general
presentation of the principles of these tropes insofar as they are relevant to the study
of proper names.

2. Metaphor and metonymy for proper name study

6 Since Aristotle and his three principles of memory: similarity, contiguity and contrast,
metaphor has been understood as resulting from similarity, or analogy, and metonymy
from “contiguity”, a tricky spatial metaphor when applied to the mental domain.
Structural linguistics viewed the analogy between source and target as a number of
shared features or semes, so as a purely linguistic phenomenon. Cognitive Linguistics
introduced a different, mentalist perspective with the publication of Lakoff & Johnson
[1980], in which meanings are viewed as consisting of supra-linguistic concepts
resulting from our cognitive experience (Nyckees [2007]5). The links present in
metaphor and metonymy are therefore seen as existing between concepts instead of
lexical units. The essence of metaphor is the mapping of conceptual elements between
a source and a target concepts belonging to different domains, frames, scenarios or
ICMs (Idealized Cognitive Models) (Kövecses [2020: 50]). However, these hypothetical
divisions of the mental space chronically lacked empirical grounding (Riemer [2002],
Peirsman & Geeraerts [2006]). There remains the fact that whatever specific cognitive

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 4

mechanism is postulated like the class-inclusion model or the correspondence model

(Wee [2006]) analogy plays a role since without it metaphor simply does not work.
Metaphors can be classified superficially, e.g. animal-to-animal or synaesthetic, but the
unicity of analogy somewhat reduces the interest of such a classification.
7 Contiguity is another matter. Structural linguistics dealt with it by postulating co-
participation in a predication or by having recourse to the psycholinguistic notion of
lexical association: for instance, wine is in the same lexical field as bottle, which explains
why a sentence like We drank an old bottle is not anomalous in spite of the selection
restrictions of drink. In a Cognitive Linguistics approach, wine is connected to bottle
because the corresponding concepts are co-present in a domain (same remark as above
about this notion) and this causes them to be co-activated or “highlighted” together.
Metonymy, like metaphor, is a pervasive phenomenon: for instance, Markert & Nissim
[2006] found that about 20% of occurrences of country names, and about 30% of those
of company names in their corpus were metonymized. It can occur in subtle ways that
are not easily detected (Littlemore [2015: 99-104]), as some names in the following
sections will show. Another problem is the considerable variety of relations between
source and target, which are similar to the modification relations of binominal lexical
units (Pepper [2020], Pepper & Arnaud [2022]). Also, contrary to the generally clear-cut
examples favoured by authors (Markert & Nissim [2006]), some metonymies, like
compounds, are ambiguous in that two or more categories of relations seem to coexist
in them, with the additional complication that there occur “metonymic chains” in
which the target-source substitution results from the successive application of more
than one metonymy. This means that research on the categories of metonymy, and not
only its mechanisms, is necessary. Most metonymies, however, tend to rest on
stereotypical relationships (Knowles & Moon [2006: 22], Peirsman [2006]), but the many
taxonomies that have been published (reviewed for instance in Peirsman & Geeraerts
[2006], Littlemore [2015: 19-20]), although most coincide in their most frequently
reported categories, are never entirely similar. This difficulty points to the conceptual
nature of the phenomenon, as the unlimited number of possible connections between
concepts makes them hard to taxonomize and label with words. A well-grounded and
fairly recent taxonomy is that of Peirsman & Geeraerts [2006]. These authors decided to
approach metonymy by revisiting the notion of contiguity, applying a different, but
also cognitive-based, approach, that of Prototype Theory. They compiled a list of types
of metonymy and, considering that the category’s core is SPATIAL PART FOR WHOLE, they
placed the other types at various distances from it, along the three dimensions of
boundedness, strength of contact and domain (e.g. spatial >> temporal). Peirsman &
Geeraerts’ list includes 23 types of source-target relations like 13. POSSESSOR & POSSESSED
(46 types if one considers that the 23 are reversible, which is symbolized by an
ampersand between the two terms). It was compiled from a set of pre-structuralist
works in diachronic semantics, which, according to the authors, are invaluable for
descriptive purposes. Also of interest is the PHAB scheme, which was devised by Pepper
[2020] based on earlier work on binominal compounds by Bourque [2014], and is a
taxonomy of the modification relations in binominal units (mainly [NN] N compounds in
the Germanic languages and prepositional units in the Romance languages, but
N + relational adjective units are also taken into account). The scheme was not initially
devised for metonymies, but its possible application to them was expressly mentioned
by Pepper. Not counting three categories of similarity, PHAB comprises 14 categories,
13 of which are reversible (reversed categories are indicated by an -R suffix). The

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 5

scheme also includes a very abstract level, which has two categories, containment and
causation.
8 One problem with lists of 23 relations (Peirsman & Geeraerts’ – another recent list, that
of Radden and Kövecses [1999] is not very different from it in that it is comprised of 16
ICMs supporting metonymies) or 14 relations (PHAB) is that they might not be granular
enough for applying to proper names, if we consider that Markert & Nissim [2006]
found no fewer than six metonymic relations on company names in their corpus,
including one, organisation-for-index, which was not mentioned in the previous
literature:
organisation-for-members
organisation-for-facility
organisation-for-product
organisation-for-index (e.g. Eurotunnel was the most active stock.)
organisation-for-event (e.g. the aftermath of Westland)
9 Sasaki & Negri Isquerdo [2020] also mention that in their study of names of police
operations in Brazil they had to provide labels for relations absent from the literature.
In devising a fine-grained taxonomy based on proper names in general, it is clearly
impossible to foresee how many types of relations will be detected and I therefore
decided to initially use ad hoc labels for the relations and to refer to Peirsman &
Geeraerts’ taxonomy and the PHAB scheme in a second stage.
10 Metaphor and metonymy do not exist in separate worlds and their relations attracted
the attention of cognitive linguists, whose interest appears in the volumes edited by
Barcelona [2000] and Dirven & Pörings [2002], but since Goossens [1990], the term
metaphtonymy had gained currency to refer to cases where a succession of a metaphor
and a metonymy (or the opposite order) links source and target. Note that
metaphtonymy is a different issue to that of the possible metonymic underpinnings of
metaphor (Kövecses [2020: 34sq.]), nor is it similar to “compound metaphor” (Kövecses
[2020: 9]). Although it is all-too-easy to fall into the trap of seeing metaphtonymy in
cases that can be explained more simply, we will see that it is present in the domain of
proper names.
11 Overall, there has been to my knowledge little contact between research on metaphor
and metonymy on one hand and research on proper names, and more particularly
onomastics, on the other. Of course, occurrences like the following have long been
explained as metaphorical:

Ernst Mayr, the Harvard University evolutionary biologist, who has been
called the Darwin of the 20th century, was one of the 100 greatest scientists of
all time.6

12 As Van Langendonck [2007: 94] notes, “different readings of a proprial lemma can be
linked by operations like metonymy, metaphor, generalization, specialization, and so
on.” However, what was in focus was not metaphor in itself but the explanation of some
of the uses of proper names (e.g.: Gary-Prieur [1994: 36-37, 174], Van Langendonck
[2007: 94, 97]). On the onomastics side, metaphor and metonymy are mentioned
occasionally when, for instance, nicknames or occupational surnames are discussed
but, again, there is no real intersection of the two domains. What contact there is seems
to be limited to a number of articles dealing with automatic metonymy recognition or
certain specific metaphors or types of discourse (e.g. Peirsman [2006], Wee [2006],

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 6

Markert & Nissim [2006], Sasaki & Negri Isquerdo [2020]). The present paper is aimed at
bridging this gap by an examination of antonomasia and onomastical data.

3. Antonomasia
13 As happens with rhetorical terminology, antonomasia is a polysemous term. In its first
sense, antonomasia1,
1. The substitution of an epithet or title for a proper name. Also: the substituted
epithet itself [OED on-line].
denotes conventionalized periphrasis as in the following examples:
The Big Easy “New Orleans”
The Desert Fox “Rommel”
Old Glory “the US Flag”

14 This kind of substitution, which is frequent in media discourse, need not concern us
here. The second sense, antonomasia2:
2. The use of the proper name of a particular individual as a generic term to denote
others who belong to an implied type; an instance of this. [OED on-line].
which could be reformulated as “the transformation of a proper name into a common
noun”, or “the use of a proprial lemma as a common noun”, is relevant to metaphor
and metonymy. Syntactically, the resulting unit has access to more constructions than
its source proper name, and semantically, as Gary-Prieur [1994: 37] notes, the link
between the source and the common noun may be lost: it is possible to use the cheese
name camembert without any awareness of the existence of an eponymous village.

3.1. Metaphor

15 The following examples of antonomasia2 are due to metaphor. The basis of the analogy
is in pointed brackets. Note that in English there are often two versions, one with an
initial capital and one without, in which case the proper name nature of the source is
less present.
16 - Names of humans, real or fictional, or of mythological or historical entities:

atlas <bears the world>

Jezabel <evil woman>
Peeping Tom <looks surreptitiously at woman>
thug <bandit>
vandal <destructive human>
mentor <educator>
Quisling <traitor and collaborator>
Don Juan, Lothario <seducer>
meander <curvy (like the Asia Minor river)>
juggernaut <moving, towering and crushing>7
Fr. judas “peephole” <treacherous>

French examples from classical antiquity: hercule <strong>, apollon <man, handsome>,
mécène <generous, patron>, égérie <woman, inspirator>, cerbère <fierce, vigilant, guard>,
mégère <woman, fierce>, sosie “look-alike” <visually similar>, méduse “jellyfish” <has
snake-like appendages>.

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 7

17 - Place names:

spa <has mineral springs >> hydrotherapy>

mecca <attracts people>
eden <pleasant place>
Fr. capharnaüm <disorderly place>

18 - Others

dreadnought <heavily armed and armoured (like HMS Dreadnought)>

3.2. Metonymy

19 The variety of metonymy is apparent:

• PLACE OF PRODUCTION FOR PRODUCT: cheddar, madeira, china, shantung, Fr. bourgogne “Burgundy”,
bristol “fine cardboard”.8
• PLACE WHERE WORN FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING: balaclava, homburg, bermudas, jodhpurs, panama.9
• INVENTOR FOR INVENTION: mackintosh, macadam, sandwich, Sally Lunn, diesel.
• FAMOUS WEARER FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING: wellingtons, cardigan, spencer, baby doll.
• ORIGINAL WEARER FOR STYLE OF GARMENT: raglan.
20 Note that antonomasia by metonymy is a common occurrence with company names:
founder >> company >> product, e.g. a Ford, a biro. It is also close to generalization, e.g.
Hoover for any vacuum cleaner, Zeppelin for any airship, Fr. frigidaire for any
refrigerator.

3.3. Metaphtonymy
• academy, the grove of Academe >> Plato’s school: PLACE FOR INSTITUTION, then “an institution
LIKE Plato’s school”: metaphor.

• derrick: famous hangman >> gallows: PERSON FOR OBJECT OF ACTIVITY, then “a structure LIKE a
gallows”: metaphor.
• Mae West “life jacket (WW2 slang)”: a device that makes one look LIKE the buxom actress Mae
West: EFFECT FOR CAUSE plus metaphor. Or, “a device that looks LIKE a part of Mae West’s body”:
metaphor, plus BODY PART FOR PERSON. This is a good example of interpretational ambiguity.
• Fr. pactole “large sum”, LIKE the gold found in the river Pactolus: PLACE FOR OBJECT.
• Fr. dédale “labyrinth”, LIKE the labyrinth built by Daedalus: INVENTOR FOR INVENTION.

4. Onomastics
21 Onomastics is the study of proper names, in which the focus may be statistical, for
instance in the study of first-name trends or surname attrition, but it is mainly
etymological, as many names of humans and places have been made opaque by the
passing of time. For instance, most English parish-names were first attested in
Domesday Book, but many had been given to the corresponding places some time
between 450 and 1086, so their original meaning might have been forgotten in the
meantime and their form modified to fit a new, erroneous, interpretation (Reaney

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 8

[1967: 18]). Metaphor and metonymy are examined below in nicknames, surnames and
place-names.

4.1. Nicknames

22 A nickname is a name given to a person, place or other entity, generally as a substitute

for an already existing name, but also in the absence of a known name. Nicknames are
more frequent in closed communities like schools, army units, etc. They generally
display humour, familiarity or vulgarity. If nicknames may be literal, like Nosey for the
Duke of Wellington (The Iron Duke by antonomasia 1), whose portraits leave no doubt as
to the nickname’s motivation, many are ironical and therefore include antiphrasis like
Tiny for a very tall individual, or else they are outright nasty. The correspondence
between name and referent may be extremely devious and ingenious nicknames are
undoubtedly a manifestation of the poetic function of language. Consequently, the
origin of a nickname may be unclear or obscure: for instance, there is no satisfactory
explanation of the fact that a section of San Francisco is known as the Tenderloin. 10
23 The following example is an elaborate one: the Bell Airacuda, a pre-WW2 American
warplane, was dubbed the Hangar Queen due to its propensity to incidents. 11 This
nickname involves a complex calculus of meaning, as queen is a metaphor with a
positive connotation (it is, however, prone to ironical use as in drag queen) but hangar
refers metonymically to not flying (PLACE FOR ACTIVITY), which is contrary to the purpose
of an aeroplane. Another plane (the Cessna Skymaster), used during the Vietnam War
for “PSYOPS”, which included the dropping of propaganda leaflets, received another
humorous nickname: the Bullshit Bomber12 In this compound, the head is metaphorical
(the plane is LIKE a bomber in that it airdrops things), while the modifier is
metaphtonymic (bullshit includes both a metaphor for “nonsense, contemptible
discourse” and a metonymy as what the plane drops is not “nonsense”, an abstract
concept, but leaflets: CONTENTS FOR SUPPORT.

4.1.1. Metaphorical nicknames

24 Although places seem to receive nicknames less frequently than humans, examples are
not scarce. The following example is illustrative of metaphorical naming:

Spouting its many chimneys beyond the junction in the background is

Kennett House. This fine Art Deco style building was known locally as “the
ship” or “Queen Mary [...]”13

This passage is from the caption of a photograph where the building in question
appears as a long, tall block with a row of chimneys, hence the visual analogy to an
ocean liner. The Seven Sisters refers to a length of cliffs with seven summits near Dover.
Hell’s Kitchen is an area of Manhattan’s former gangland. The narrow corridors
prolonging the territories of several of the United States, esp. Oklahoma, are called the
Panhandle. An area with a regular street plan in SW London is known by estate agents as
the Toastrack.14 Like the “Queen Mary” above, buildings have received metaphorical
shape-based nicknames, as in London the Gherkin, the Shard or the Walkie Talkie.
25 Nicknames of people are much more frequent, and the tenors of the metaphors are
more varied:

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 9

the Swede: a blonde character in Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral, on the
stereotype that Swedes have blonde hair.
Pigpen: a character in the Peanuts comic strip who is represented as scruffy.
Bambi†-15: a sensitive individual in the armed forces.
Emu†: a failed pilot (emus being flightless birds).
Teflon†: an individual who always escapes blame.

4.1.2. Metonymic examples

26 Physical characteristics provide many nicknames, and those that are indirectly
descriptive are frequently metonymic. Since all humans have a head, a face, etc., a
distinctive modifier is present, which results in compound nicknames.
• BODY PART FOR PERSON: Scarface (the title character of two films), Babyface (Nelson, a gangster),
Ratface, Weaselface, Fr. Gueule Tordue “twisted mug” (a Gestapo collaborator with facial
paralysis), Sp. Cara de Piña “pineapple face” (the pockmarked Panamanian dictator Noriega),
Muscles (tennis player Ken Rosewall, by antiphrasis as he did not have much strength).
• OBJECT OF ACTIVITY FOR PERSON: Sparks: radio operators, Bones: the doctor in Star Trek and the
eponymous forensic anthropologist of a TV series.
• OBJECT OF HABIT FOR PERSON: Peanuts: from a childhood love of the food (Jazz player Peanuts
Hucko), “Jimmy Two-times, who got that nickname because he said everything twice.” (film
Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese, 1990), Booger†: a nose-picker, Fr Papa m’a dit “Dad told me”: a son
of President Mitterrand who was his adviser.
• EFFECT FOR CAUSE: Coma†: a boring person.
• PLACE-FROM FOR PERSON: Tex (Avery), Indiana (Jones), Philly (Joe Jones).
• PART FOR WHOLE: The Dome: a building in Edinburgh, Fr. Les 24 Colonnes: the lawcourt building in
Lyon.

4.1.3. Metonymy chains and metaphtonymies

27 Given the frequently devious relation of nicknames, metonymy chains and

metaphtonymies can be expected.

Silicon Valley, where the modifier stands for the computer industry: SUBSTANCE
FOR ACTIVITY, possibly mediated by SUBSTANCE FOR OBJECT , in which case this a
metonymy chain.
Rust Belt can be considered as a metaphtonymy as it combines a metaphor on
the head and a metonymy on the modifier: rust for the steel industry: again,
SUBSTANCE FOR ACTIVITY.
Spuds “Irishman”: may be analyzed as OBJECT OF HABIT FOR PERSON, but this does
not account for the stereotype that potatoes are the staple food of Ireland, so
we can add OBJECT FOR PLACE.
Paco† “someone with a taste for nachos, tacos, and quesadillas”. Both these
foods and the Spanish name Paco (a hypocoristic of Francisco) are associated
with Mexico: OBJECT FOR PLACE and the individual is LIKE a Mexican in his love of
the foods.
Fr. Picasso: a class of railcars with an unusual driver’s cab on the roof. The
vehicle looks LIKE a painting by Picasso: ARTIST FOR WORK, in that it has a
bizarre shape.

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4.2. Place-names

28 Place-names16 vary in their opaqueness. Some have not changed much with the passing
of time or may result from recent naming, like Palm Springs (Cal.). Whether they appear
as opaque or transparent, sometimes wrongly so, like Slaughter which actually meant
“muddy place” (Mills [1998: xi]), etymological work from mentions in early documents
is necessary, as for Reaney’s [1960: 41] example Abram (La.), Adburgham in 1199,
probably from earlier Ēadburgeham “farmstead of a woman named Ēadburh”. In what
follows I discuss the naming process, irrespective of its present-day transparence.
29 A type of place-name may be of interest in that it originates in surnames, but it does
not involve tropes because it results from honorific or memorial naming. Examples of
honorific names are Sydney, Melbourne or Wellington, and Coronado, De Soto, Marquette
(USA), originally surnames of explorers, are memorials.

4.2.1. Metaphorical place-names

30 Metaphor is certainly less frequent than metonymy, but not absent, and often close to
nicknaming (cases that seem to exhibit irony, like the several other Versailles or Le Petit
Versailles in France are best classified as nicknames). Some metaphors are recurrent:
Little X names may refer to places inhabited by people from X, in which these places are
LIKE X: Reaney [1960: 232] reports that Petye Caleys in Westminster was the residence of
wool-staplers from Calais, there is a Little Italy in New York City. Venice frequently
inspired names: Venezuela “little Venice” received its name because of stilt houses on
Lake Maracaibo;17 there is a Little Venice in London and a Petite Venise in Colmar (France)
with canals; Venice (Los Angeles) was a land development, also along canals. Hell Gate in
New York is a passage in the East River with strong currents.

4.2.2. Metonymy in place-names

31 Like most naming, the naming of places is necessarily distinctive, and this is often
achieved by picking out a salient local feature. This is explicit in the etymon of Bristol,
Brycgstow, generally understood as “bridge-place”. Such a name is directly descriptive
and involves neither metaphor nor metonymy. On the contrary, in the case of Uxbridge
“Wixan’s bridge”, the Wixan being a Saxon tribe, a settlement was named after its
bridge, an important element at the time, with a metonymy that can be labelled as
SALIENT FEATURE FOR PLACE. This metonymy is present in simplex names like Bath (a spa),
cf. Ger. Baden-Baden, Fr. Bains-les-Bains), Wells, Poole. The salient feature may itself be a
named entity, as in Frome, a town name deriving from that of the local river, or the
London district name Elephant and Castle, originally the name of an inn. In the case of
the Alps, the mountain range probably owes its name to the common noun for summer
pastures18 (the Southern Alps, New Zealand, is of course a metaphor) in the same way as
waterfalls gave their name to the Cascades range of the north-western USA. Compounds
with this metonymy are more frequent than simplex names, like Sevenoaks, Newmarket,
Mountain Ash, Liverpool, Oxford.
32 Another category of metonymy is present in Battle, the name of a village near Hastings:
EVENT FOR PLACE. In town names like Sulphur, Radium, Galena, Borax, Gypsum (USA), Asbestos
(Canada), we have: PRODUCT FOR PLACE. French examples are: la Soie “the Silk”, la Poudrette
“the human manure”, la Dynamite. Many British place-names derive from the name of

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 11

the first settlers. A name like Birmingham (<< Beormingahām) “the settlement of
Beorma’s people” is directly descriptive and therefore not metonymic, but place-names
in -ing like Barking ( Berecingas in 695) “those of the beech-tree” (Reaney [1960: 1]),
Godalming “Godhelm’s people”, Reading “Reada’s people” may be ascribed to a FOUNDER
FOR PLACE metonymy. Less ancient examples with the surname of the founder of the
town are not uncommon in the USA, as in Tatum (TX), McClusky (ND). This is different
from honorific naming, and another case of a proper name producing a proper name of
a different category.
33 The above was about the naming of places, but established place-names also apply to
other places or other entities, as we saw in the discussion of antonomasia. Their
presence in surnames will be examined in the following section, but apart from these
they are involved in well-known metonymies.
• PART OF COUNTRY FOR COUNTRY: Holland for the Netherlands. When French speakers use
l’Angleterre, they usually refer to Britain or the UK. Prussia, originally the name of a region of
moderate size on the eastern shores of the Baltic sea, was by the mid-19 th century the name
of a political entity that also included most of Northern Germany and parts of present-day
Poland. The opposite movement is found in the well-known example of CONTINENT FOR

COUNTRY, America for the USA.

• COUNTRY FOR GOVERNMENT: Australia refuses to join global pledge led by US and EU to cut
methane emissions19.
• COUNTRY FOR POPULATION: Mexico fears volcanic eruption20.
• CITY FOR GOVERNMENT: Beijing warns China-linked US businesses: you cannot ‘make a fortune
in silence’21.
Concerning the above three metonymies, Lecolle [2001] notes that it is not always clear
what the exact referent is, and this indeterminacy allows journalists to avoid
unnecessary precision.
• PLACE FOR SPORTS TEAM: Wales loses to Scotland 14-1022.
• PLACE FOR INSTITUTION: Why Scotland Yard dropped its investigation into Prince Andrew and Jeffrey
Epstein23.
• PLACE FOR ACTIVITY: Hollywood adapts to climate change24.
• PLACE FOR EVENT: Pearl Harbor “led to a changed world”25.

4.2.3. Metonymic chains and metaphtonymies

34 PLACE FOR INSTITUTION examples frequently involve a metonymic chain as in the

following: The Hill reacted to President Joe Biden’s decision to pull the nomination of David
Chipman [...] 26 since this also requires INSTITUTION FOR MEMBERS. The following example is
metaphtonymic: He fears that the evacuation of Kabul is a new, “worse Saigon”. 27 The
evacuation of Kabul is LIKE Saigon and Saigon is PLACE FOR EVENT.

4.3. Surnames

35 The binominal anthroponymic systems with a given first name and a surname
inherited from the father in use in most Western European countries are very similar
and appeared during comparable periods. English surnames were in fairly general use
by 1325 in the South and by 1400 in the North (Reaney [1967: 315]). This means that
surnames were originally in Middle English and in six centuries they have had time to

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 12

change or fall out of use as common nouns, to the point that many, like place-names,
have become opaque, like Lorimer “spur-maker”. As in the preceding section, I will be
discussing opaque as well as transparent examples, because the focus is on what the
names meant when they were first given. Obviously, surnames became arbitrary as
soon as they became hereditary and their literal sense became irrelevant: for instance,
a woman may be called Wilkinson or Trueman.
36 English surnames can be categorized as follows, with a similar typology in the
neighbouring languages:
• personal names and diminutives or hypocoristics. E.g. James, Lewis, Arnold, Baldwin, Harvey,
Allis; Austin; Dickie, Dodge, Watt, Wilcox, Parnell.
• interpersonal relations: mainly patronymics, some matronymics; the genitive suffix may
also occasionally indicate a widow or a servant.28 E.g. Adams, Williams, Sanders; Thomson,
Hodgkinson, Megson; Fitzgerald.
• personal characteristics: Gay, Littell, Gray, Hardy, Rank “strong”, Freeman, Franklin, Whitehead,
Armstrong.
• occupations and titles: a) directly descriptive: Cook, Cooper, Sheppard, Prentice, Chapman; King,
Bishop, Abbott; b) indirect: Whitbread (Fr. Blancpain, Ger. Weissbrot), Spence, Peppercorn.
• place-names: a) toponyms, ranging from names of large entities to those of hamlets or
farmsteads: Ireland, Lancashire, Gloster, Norton, Fenwick, Cunningham, Postlethwaite, Ramsbottom,
Ravenscroft, Sessions (<< Fr. Soissons); b) common nouns of topographical entities: simplex: 29
Gate, Green, Bridge, Castle, Wood, Holt “wood”; prepositional: Nash, Attenborough, Underhill (Ger.
Zumthor, Imhof).
• nicknames: Lightfoot, Drinkwater, Turnbull, Fairweather, Blanchflower, Peabody.
37 Note that Reaney [1967: 19], who has a very etymological approach, groups personal
characteristics with nicknames, but the definition of nickname given above justifies the
distinction. As can be expected, the original motivation of nicknames-turned-surnames
isn’t always clear: Drinkwater (Fr. Boileau, It. Bevilacqua) may have referred ironically to
an alcoholic (which is clear in Fr. Boivin “drinkwine”), or else to an individual who was
so poor that he couldn’t afford beer, a safer drink at the time (Reaney [1967: 281-282]).
38 In order for reference to be possible, a surname distinguishes an individual in a
community and this is done by highlighting an aspect of the individual, so an abstract
PART FOR WHOLE conceptual metonymy is always present. Surnames that were directly
descriptive of their bearer, like personal names, patronymics, trade names and some of
the nicknames are not relevant here. A title like King may have been due to the natural
authority of the bearer or to the behaviour of a conceited individual and thus be
metaphorical, but it is much more likely to be directly descriptive of an individual who
played the role of a king in a medieval play or was the May Day king of the village
(Reaney [1967: 170]). Bullock, Lamb may be metaphorically based on respectively
strength and meekness, but they may as well derive from the objects of the activity of
the first bearer of the name, in which case they are metonymic. Bird (Fr. Loiseau, Ger.
Vogel) was given to the winner who hit the wooden bird at the top of a pole in an
archery competition, so it includes a different metonymy. Of animal names, only
examples like Fox, Wolf(e) or Peacock can be considered as probably metaphorical.
39 Metonymic examples are varied. Personal physical characteristics are often
represented as compounds, as, for instance, a head is a prototypical part of humans and
a modifier denoting a distinguishing feature was necessary: Whitehead (Ger. Weisskopf,
cf. Fr. Grossetête “big head”, Fr. Beauvisage “fair face”), Cruikshank “bowlegged” (cf. Fr.

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 13

Longjarret “long shank”, Courtecuisse “short thigh”). Quatermain (<< Fr. quatre mains “four
hands”) may have been the nickname of a greedy individual. 30 Unmodified Hand and
Foot are possible simplex exceptions, but in all cases, the metonymy is of the BODY PART
FOR PERSON category.

40 Surnames stemming from toponyms are also obviously metonymic. Logically, in a place
named, say, Ruston, there was no point in calling people Ruston, whereas this would
have been a useful distinguisher a few miles away, in a village where people of different
nearby origins resided, so the metonymy is PLACE-FROM FOR PERSON.
41 The case of common nouns of places is different, as they can be used as distinguishers
in the local community: an individual living by the gate is thus distinguished from one
living on the green. The metonymy can therefore be described as PLACE-AT FOR PERSON,
with examples like Wood, Wall, Cross. Other cases are ambiguous. Mill may indicate
residence at or near a mill, but also result from metonymic reference to the workplace
(PLACE OF ACTIVITY FOR PERSON) and thus be equivalent to Miller, as with, respectively, Fr.
Moulin and Meunier. This also applies to names of potential workplaces like Croft, Castle,
Hall or Malthus “malt-house”.
42 Another category of metonymy affects surnames like Salmon, Sturgeon, Hammer, Spade,
Shovell, Bell,31 Wool, Pepper, Cheese, Whitbread (Fr. Blancpain , Ger. Weissbrot ): OBJECT OF
ACTIVITY FOR PERSON. A few surnames have to do with time: Hol(l)iday (time of baptism?),
Winter: TIME FOR PERSON. Finally, the explanations for surnames originating from
nicknames are similar to those mentioned above: Purdue, an exclamation (<< par Dieu!),
corresponds to OBJECT OF HABIT FOR PERSON, and this also applies tentatively to greetings
or expletives like Fairweather, Goodyear, Goodenough. The same metonymy is present in
the two possible interpretations of Drinkwater, discussed above. Moneypenny (<< many
penny) may be interpreted as OBJECT POSSESSED FOR PERSON.
43 In turn, proper names of persons may be used metaphorically or metonymically, and
we have seen examples in the section on antonomasia, but antonomasia does not
happen if the result of the change remains a proper name. This is the case with
exemplars or paragons, which are instances of metaphors. Note that the following
constitutes an excursion from onomastics proper.

He is no Einstein!

The exemplarity of Albert Einstein as a genius is conventionalized, as appears in the

following example:
It is not that we are thinking that we have like an Einstein dog in front of us
that knows everything32

but the following, famous and rhetorically lethal example is an occasional one:
Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.33

44 In a sentence like “Henry James bores me to death”, we have the ARTIST FOR WORK
metonymy, and surnames can even appear in PERSON FOR TIME metonymies, as in the
following example:

Yan Morvan captures counterculture in Thatcher’s London.34

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 14

45 Another example of proper name involvement in metonymy is LEADER FOR SUBORDINATES,

as in Putin’s attacks on civilians raise pressure on US35 as the attacks are not carried out
personally by Putin.
46 To end this section, and although honorific naming is involved in the second change,
we can note that the wheel sometimes goes full circle, as in Washington: place-name >>
surname >> place-name.

5. The variety of metonymy

47 The above sections have shown the presence of metaphor and metonymy in proper
names but, if the two tropes are apparently equally represented in antonomasia and
nicknames, there is clearly more metonymy than metaphor in place-names and
surnames. Counting types, 36 different metonymies were identified. This is more than
the 23 categories of Peirsman & Geeraerts [2006] (see above, Section 2), however, and
would make future comparisons with domains other than that of proper names
difficult, but it is possible to raise the degree of abstraction by devising a two-tier
taxonomy. For this, the 36 metonymies were grouped into those of Peirsman &
Geeraerts (Table 1).
48 This undertaking, however, gave rise to a few problems: single examples are provided
for each category in Peirsman & Geeraerts [2006] and there is no obvious category in
which to place some of the fine-grained metonymies found in proper names, like PLACE
WHERE WORN FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING or INVENTOR FOR INVENTION ( see Table 1 for decisions); the
fact that Peirsman & Geeraerts’ categories are bi-directional results in the grouping of
lower-level metonymies that are felt to be semantically different; also, their LOCATION
stands for origin (my PLACE-FROM), position (PLACE-AT) and direction; these may all have
to do with space, but they are notably different notions. These problems, however, are
the price to be paid for more abstraction, and the resulting correspondences can be
seen in Table 1. The lesson to be drawn is that when a specific domain is investigated
for metonymies, it is preferable to use a two-tier taxonomy because, although a
general, abstract view is useful, details do count in the description of the domain. As
Table 1 shows, LOCATION & LOCATED, which groups 9 lower-level metonymies, is the most
frequent high-level category, with SPATIAL PART & WHOLE second with five relations and
CHARACTERISTIC & ENTITY third with 4. As could be expected, a specific domain like that of
proper names promotes a specific set of metonymic categories.
49 In order to confirm the validity of a layered analysis, a second operation of abstraction
from the fine-grained ad hoc metonymies was carried out using another scheme,
Pepper’s [2020] PHAB (see Section 2). As in the application of the Peirsman & Geeraerts
scheme, the task was not absolutely straightforward: whereas both modifier and head
are present in binominal units, only the source item appears in discourse in the case of
metonymy and the direction of the metonymy must be established carefully by
comparison with the examples provided for the PHAB categories. The results of the
operation are displayed in Table 2. LOCATION and LOCATION-R (10 lower-level categories
together), CONTAINMENT and CONTAINMENT-R (7) and SOURCE (5) are the most frequent
PHAB categories. The semantic space is divided differently by Peirsman & Geeraerts
[2006] and Pepper [2020], but clearly, a comparison of the two sets of high-level
categories shows that spatial relations, literal or metaphorized like SOURCE, are

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 15

dominant in the domain of proper names. An obvious explanation is that place-names

refer to spatial features, but as the examples have shown, space is not absent from
surnames, either.

Table 1. Two-level categorization of metonymies with Peirsman & Geeraerts’ [2006] scheme

Ad hoc fine-grained categories Peirsman & Geeraerts’ categories

CITY FOR GOVERNMENT

EVENT FOR PLACE

PLACE FOR ACTIVITY

PLACE FOR EVENT

PLACE FOR INSTITUTION 3. LOCATION & LOCATED

PLACE FOR OBJECT

PLACE-AT FOR PERSON

PLACE-FROM FOR PERSON

PLACE FOR POPULATION

BODY PART FOR PERSON

PART FOR WHOLE

PART OF COUNTRY FOR COUNTRY 1. SPATIAL PART & WHOLE

CONTINENT FOR COUNTRY

PLACE FOR SPORTS TEAM

OBJECT OF ACTIVITY FOR PERSON

PERSON FOR OBJECT USED

OBJECT OF HABIT FOR PERSON 6. CHARACTERISTIC & ENTITY

PLACE OF ACTIVITY FOR PERSON

SALIENT FEATURE FOR PLACE

ARTIST FOR WORK

INVENTOR FOR INVENTION 7. PRODUCER & PRODUCT

FOUNDER FOR PLACE

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 16

PRODUCT FOR PLACE

PLACE OF PRODUCTION FOR PRODUCT 12. LOCATION & PRODUCT

PLACE WHERE WORN FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING

COUNTRY FOR GOVERNMENT

8. CONTROLLER & CONTROLLED
LEADER FOR SUBORDINATES

FAMOUS WEARER FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING

16. PIECE OF CLOTHING & PERSON
ORIGINAL WEARER FOR STYLE OF GARMENT

PERSON FOR TIME

19. TIME & ENTITY
TIME FOR PERSON

CONTENTS FOR SUPPORT 9. CONTAINER & CONTAINED

EFFECT FOR CAUSE 11. CAUSE & EFFECT

POSSESSED FOR PERSON. 13. POSSESSOR & POSSESSED

SUBSTANCE FOR ACTIVITY 14. ACTION & PARTICIPANT

INSTITUTION FOR MEMBERS 18. SINGLE ENTITY & COLLECTION

Table 2. Three-level categorization of metonymies using Pepper’s [2020] PHAB scheme

Ad hoc categories PHAB low-level PHAB high-level

CITY FOR GOVERNMENT LOCATION CONTAINMENT

PLACE FOR ACTIVITY

PLACE FOR EVENT

PLACE FOR INSTITUTION

PLACE FOR OBJECT

PLACE FOR POPULATION

PLACE OF ACTIVITY FOR PERSON

PLACE-AT FOR PERSON

CONTENTS FOR SUPPORT CONTAINMENT-R

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 17

COUNTRY FOR GOVERNMENT

PART OF COUNTRY FOR COUNTRY

SALIENT FEATURE FOR PLACE

CONTINENT FOR COUNTRY CONTAINMENT

INSTITUTION FOR MEMBERS

PLACE FOR SPORTS TEAM

PART FOR WHOLE MERONOMY-R

BODY PART FOR PERSON

PRODUCT FOR PLACE LOCATION - R

EVENT FOR PLACE

POSSESSED FOR PERSON POSSESSION

LEADER FOR SUBORDINATES POSSESSION-R

PERSON FOR TIME TEMPORALITY

TIME FOR PERSON TEMPORALITY-R

OBJECT OF HABIT FOR PERSON TOPIC

INVENTOR FOR INVENTION SOURCE-R CAUSATION

ORIGINAL WEARER FOR STYLE OF GARMENT

PLACE OF PRODUCTION FOR PRODUCT

PLACE WHERE WORN FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING

PLACE-FROM FOR PERSON

ARTIST FOR WORK PRODUCTION-R

FOUNDER FOR PLACE

PERSON FOR OBJECT USED USAGE-R

FAMOUS WEARER FOR PIECE OF CLOTHING

SUBSTANCE FOR ACTIVITY DIRECTION-R

EFFECT FOR CAUSE CAUSATION-R

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 18

OBJECT OF ACTIVITY FOR PERSON PRODUCTION

Conclusion
50 The survey of antonomasia, nicknames, place-names and surnames has shown that
metaphor and metonymy affect proper names, but in varying proportions, metonymy
appearing as more frequent in place-names and surnames. No fewer than 36 categories
of metonymies were identified, and this count is probably not exhaustive. Section 1 on
the nounness of proper names was concluded by asking whether, like common nouns,
proper names are susceptible to metaphor and metonymy. The data prove that this is
indeed very much the case. This, however, is in apparent contradiction to proper
names’ paucity of lexical-semantic content. This contradiction disappears if we
consider the cognitivist view of metaphor and metonymy as occurring between
concepts and remember that the difficulty of their categorization and their frequent
ambiguity constitute an argument for the conceptual nature of metonymies (Section 2).
At the conceptual level, as we also saw in Section 2, encyclopaedic information is on a
continuum with lexical-semantic information, and metaphor and metonymy can make
use of all the information available. In this view, proper names and common nouns lend
themselves equally well to tropes, which contributes to the “nouny” character of
proper names.
51 Concerning metonymy, domains like those of antonomasia or human and spatial
named entities correspond to sets of fine-grained categories of source-target relations,
some of which, like OBJECT OF HABIT FOR PERSON, may be domain-specific, and others, like
spatial ones, are simply a reflection of the nature of the domain investigated. Higher-
level classification schemes as used in Section 5 absorb domain-specific categories,
allowing a broader perspective and making comparisons between general domains
possible. They also provide a window on an important aspect of human cognition.

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NOTES
1. In Bobigny (Seine-St Denis), Vénissieux (Rhône).
2. “Padma Lakshmi has a plan to de-Tucker Carlson America” [https://www.thedailybeast.com/
padma-lakshmi-has-a-plan-to-de-tucker-carlson-america]
3. “When Hazel McCallion retired in 2014 as the mayor of the Canadian city of Mississauga, she
was 93. But while most people her age typically retreat from the spotlight of public life,
“Hurricane Hazel” has shown little interest in slowing down.” https://www.theguardian.com/
world/2022/apr/12/hazel-mccallion-101-canada-mississauga-airport
Out of context Hurricane Hazel is ambiguous, since it could also be the name of a tropical storm, in
which case the analysis would be different.
4. In the case of a name like Bomber Harris (the nickname of the head of the RAF’s Bomber
Command during WWII), the following remark by Philippe [2018] applies: “[...] close appositions
are now treated as a modified noun phrase with a syntactic head-modifier hierarchy which
mirrors the referential dissymmetry between the common and proper nouns. All of which brings
CAs closer to modified or complemented NPs, as well as compounds [...]”
5. Nyckees is critical of a semantic approach that does not take into account social experiences
and beliefs or the history of language.
6. https://tardigrade.in/question/the-biologist-who-has-been-called-as-the-darwin-of-
the-20the-qcxfmkyh
7. From the Hindu deity Jaggannath whose idol was drawn in procession on a huge chariot.

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 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 21

8. With a metonymy chain in Fr. bristol “visiting card”.

9. Panama hats were made in Ecuador and worn by workers during the digging of the Panama
Canal.
10. There is a probably apocryphal anecdote concerning an earlier Tenderloin in Manhattan
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_Manhattan and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Tenderloin,_San_Francisco)
11. https://imodeler.com/2021/10/the-deadliest-thing-in-the-sky-okay-but-for-whom-bell-
yfm-1-airacuda/
12. https://imodeler.com/2021/11/cessna-o-2-skymaster/
13. Shackcloth, Paul, 2003, Manchester in the Days of Steam: 1. Victoria Station and the North East
Suburbs, Cheadle Hulme: Steam Image, unpaginated.
14. https://www.foxtons.co.uk/local-life/the-toastrack/
15. Examples with a dagger were found in the https://kidadl.com/articles/best-military-
nicknames website.
16. Place-names and surnames were verified in the following dictionaries: Cottle [1978], Ekwall
[1960], Hanks & Hodges [1988], Mills [1998], Reaney [1976]. Other sources are Reaney [1960, 1967].
17. There is another version, however.
18. Many toponyms in the French Alps include singular Alpe like l’Alpe d’Huez.
19. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-03/australia-refuses-to-join-global-pledge-to-cut-
methane-emissions/100589510
20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGE-s1MHfk
21. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/02/beijing-warns-china-linked-us-
businesses-you-cannot-make-a-fortune-in-silence
22. https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/6n-wales-loses-to-scotland-14-10-drops-to-5th-place-
finish/
23. https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/954413/why-scotland-yard-dropped-its-
investigation-into-prince-andrew-and-jeffrey
24. https://www.americaadapts.org/episodes/hollywood-adapts-to-climate-change-the-podcast
25. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/12/07/pearl-harbor-wwii-anniversary-
survivors/8853326002/
26. http://ww7.conservativehub.net/
27. https://remonews.com/norwayeng/he-fears-that-the-evacuation-of-kabul-is-a-new-worse-
saigon/
28. An -s suffix may be present in hypocoristics, as in Megs, Babs (Langenfelt [1941]).
29. The -s suffix may also be present as in Gates, Holmes “islands in fens”.
30. Intriguingly, sources like Cottle [1978] mention the wearing of a coat of mails.
31. Bell may also be a diminutive of Isobel.
32. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jan/17/dog-cognition-science
33. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen to Sen. Dan Quayle in a TV debate during the 1988 presidential campaign -
both were vice-presidential candidates.
34. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/21/the-big-picture-yan-morvan-
counterculture-thatcher-london-punk-mod
35. https://thehill.com/policy/international/597209-putins-attacks-on-civilians-raise-pressure-
on-us-nato/

Lexis, 20 | 2022
 Metaphor, metonymy and the nounness of proper names 22

ABSTRACTS
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.

Les noms propres sont généralement perçus comme des substantifs d’une nature particulière. On
peut s’intéresser à leurs particularités mais aussi, dans une perspective inverse, à ce qui les
rapproche des substantifs. Les noms propres sont-ils, comme ces derniers, sujets à la métaphore
et à la métonymie ? Après une section consacrée à une vue générale sur les caractéristiques du
nom propre, une seconde section envisage la métaphore et la métonymie, notamment les
relations source-cible de la métonymie et leurs taxinomies, en particulier celles de Peirsman &
Geeraerts [2006] et de Pepper [2020]. La présence des deux tropes est ensuite examinée dans
l’antonomase et dans trois sortes de données de l’onomastique : les surnoms, les toponymes et les
anthroponymes, et il apparaît que leurs manifestations sont multiples et variées, ce qui apporte
une réponse à la question ci-dessus. Les 36 relations métonymiques détectées sont regroupées
dans les deux taxinomies, ce qui fait apparaître que certaines catégories générales concernent
particulièrement les noms propres et montre l’intérêt de taxinomies à plusieurs niveaux.

INDEX
Mots-clés: nom propre, métaphore, métonymie, antonomase
Keywords: proper names, metaphor, metonymy, antonomasia

AUTHOR
PIERRE J.L. ARNAUD
Université Lumière-Lyon 2
pierre.arnaud@univ-lyon2.fr

Lexis, 20 | 2022