Theory of names and cognitive linguistics – the case of the metaphor

Abstract

The philosophical and, in a lesser degree, linguistic debate about the notion of names has been raging for a long time. The processes behind naming are presented and explained in various ways. This paper will try to give a new insight into the motivation behind the creation of new names as seen from the linguistics viewpoint. Metaphor, as one of the major sources of motivation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, is the basic form of human conceptualization. The first part of the paper presents the urrent theories about names. The second part describes the basic principles of cognitive linguistics as related to metaphors. The third part deals with providing the evidence regarding metaphor involvement in original creation of people’s names, while the last part of the paper presents examples from the Serbian language.