Carole Hough
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4925-3450 
University of Glasgow

https://doi.org/10.4467/K7501.45/22.23.18058

Settlement names in Britain are traditionally categorised as habitative names, topographical names, or folk names, depending on whether their generic elements denote buildings, landscape features, or groups of people. As has long been recognised, the third type represents metonymic transfer, with the name of a group of people being transferred to the name of their settlement. This paper argues that a majority of habitative names represent a different type of metonymy, variously designated ‘domain expansion’, ‘source-in-target’ or part for whole metonymy in linguistic scholarship. By this process, a term for a single building or other aspect of the settlement is applied to the whole settlement. The paper goes on to argue that a further type of metonymy, often designated part for part metonymy, is represented in topographical names, where a term for a landscape feature is applied to an adjacent settlement which forms part of the same conceptual domain. The argument is contextualised through a brief overview of metonymy in other areas of the onomasticon, and the paper concludes by proposing a new typology of settlement names. According to this model, the only literal (non-metonymic) settlement names are those whose generic element is a term denoting the entire settlement.

Keywords folk names, habitative names, metonymy, settlement names, topographical names