Metonimikus helynévadás

Abstract

With the mechanism of metonymy, we can create a conceptual connection between things that come into contact with each other. One form of this can be a unique place with which many different things can be associated based on experience (flora, fauna, persons associated with it, other places, events, etc.). Through the connection between them, these – generally salient – connected things can also evoke the image of the place. These associations can also appear in the names of the place, which can be realized linguistically in several different ways. In one form, no change in the linguistic designation of the intermediary element can be observed. In another, the same mechanism can change the word form: speakers transform the metonymically activated word with conjunctions or lexical elements, according to the characteristics of their language, to denote the target concept. All types must be considered to build a comprehensive picture of how the mechanism of metonymy manifests itself in naming. Building on this definition, the second part of the study examines previous onomastic statements and reviews them from a cognitive perspective, moving from common to rarer metonymic patterns (place instead of place, person instead of place, plant instead of place, animal instead of place, material instead of place, event/circumstance instead of place, etc.). Approaching metonymy as a cognitive mechanism – and by separating it to some degree from the structure of language – allows for creating a more comprehensive picture of metonymically motivated place names and lingual or dialectic differences in their realizations.