Metaphor and Metonymy in Informal Names of Urban Space

Abstract

Each object's proper name serves a specific function, namely, differentiation and identification. Much attention has long been devoted to works devoted to personal names and toponyms, while less and less attention has been paid to objects of intra-urban space, particularly urbanonyms. This article focuses on both theoretical studies on secondary nomination, i.e., unofficial names, and practical aspects. Equally important is the collection of data and the classification of figurative meanings by metonymic and metaphorical transfer. Comparative, lexical-semantic, and structural analysis allow us to compare these names, related to the Kazakh megacities of Astana and Almaty, and to identify their common patterns and differences. A sociological survey and continuous sampling method, used to study the material, helped to identify the actual use and existence of unofficial urbanonyms in the speech of city residents. The practical outcome of this work could be the creation of a fund of unofficial urbanonyms for Kazakhstan's megacities, as well as a dictionary of unofficial urbanonyms and the origins of these unofficial onyms, useful for tourists, guests visiting Kazakhstan, tourism professionals, and, of course, onomasticians, or more broadly, linguists. The results of this study can be used to create a corpus of Kazakh and Russian languages ​​and expand the unofficial onomastic vocabulary.

Keywords: urbanonyms, metaphorical transfer, metonymic transfer, secondary nomination.