Proper names are a relatively stable part of the cultural landscape and cultural traditions that were shaped for decades and centuries. They reflect cultural and social development, the development of spiritual culture, ethnic conditions and relations, language and dialects. This study addresses proper names as psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic elements whose formation and behavior are connected to the onymic space as well as its users. The author presents some circumstances affecting the common cultural values of proper names from the developmental aspect. The cultural and historical value of proper names is evaluated in relation to the objects motivating the names, and their significance to the name-givers. The language competencies of the society, and the modus operandi of proper names are also taken into account in the evaluation. Such values are reflected even in the current use of proper names and the relations of the community to them. The proper name represents the human connection to the place where an individual lives, it is an expression of this relationship and thus presents a peculiar anthropological phenomenon. It is important from the bottom-up perspective of users of the proper name within a regional onymic system. This study addresses the types of changes in oykonyms influenced by political and social changes and their impact on the social value of a proper name, its functions, motivational and communication potential of unofficial historical names. The author understands the proper name as part of tradition, culture and universal human heritage.

The article explores the characteristics of the digital lexicographical processing of Slovak anoikonyms (minor place names). It also adresses the significance of the results of analytical research on anoikonymic lexis and its synthetic processing in the digital dictionary for linguistics, especially in the research of language development and dialectology, for the standardization of geographical names and for other scientific disciplines, as well as wider cultural and social use.

The present contribution focuses on one specifi c fi gurative usage of proper nouns, namely paragon names, currently employed as derogatory or scornful terms in the debate about public affairs in Poland, as exemplifi ed by the sentence Dlatego Kaczyńscy-PL i Trumpy-PL wygrywają wybory1 [That is why Kaczyńskis and Trumps win elections]. The article argues that metonymic approaches advocated by cognitive linguists (Lakoff 1987, Kövecses and Radden 1998, Barcelona 2003, 2004, Brdar and Brdar-Szabó 2007, and Bierwiaczonek (2013, in press) proffer a more felicitous and precise explanation of the motivational processes behind paragonic uses of names than the metaphoric model advanced in Polish onomastic research, represented, among others, by Kosyl (1978), Kaleta (1998), Cieślikowa (2006) and Rutkowski (2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2012, 2017). We provide a detailed discussion of the recent cognitive linguistic literature on paragons, followed by an analysis of two Polish examples of paragonic uses, which serve as illustration of the explanatory power of selected metonymic frameworks presented in the paper.