Cognitive onomastics

The first substantial publication on cognitive onomastics was published as late as 1990. As progress has been slow ever since, cognitive onomastics is still an emerging discipline today. In the past quarter century the cognitive-onomastics enterprise has, however, provided insights into the nature of proper names (hereafter “names”) that deserve consideration from linguists of all schools of thought. An international team of cognitive onomasticians present principal methods and findings of cognitive onomastics in the present reader. It includes papers on the relationship between onomastics and cognitive science, on the nature of names (general aspects, identity), on the grammatical description of names, semantics of names (general aspects, metaphor, culture-specificness), and on names in literature (general aspects, names in translation). As names are regarded as the touchstone of linguistic theories, this book will prove indispensable to all scholars interested in language.