Toponyms of a Different Type: Metaphors as Placenames and Place Nicknames

Abstract

Some placenames and nicknames should be understood metaphorically and not literally. The nicknames of two well-known places — “Hell’s Kitchen” and the “Dust Bowl” — illustrate this by using contemporary theory of metaphor to explain them. The work of two sociologists, James Skipper and Paul Leslie, supports this argument, although they never used the word metaphor in their analyses. The similarities between their studies and this article strongly suggest that metaphoric analysis provides a way of understanding the names and nicknames of some geographic locations.