The semantic scope of English animal-specific surnames

In this paper an attempt will be made to analyse a number of surnames either directly derived from animal names or variously associated with representatives of the animal world which may be said to embody and provide a variation on the general conceptual metaphor HUMAN BEING IS ANIMAL and/or the ANIMAL NAME FOR PERSON ASSOCIATED WITH THAT NAME metonymy. Animal-related surnames represent a fragment of the English lexicon where morphology and (broadly understood) semantics meet and exert mutual infl uence on each other. It seems that in animal-based nomination language users employ such morphological mechanisms as, for example, affixation or compounding which, in turn, seem to be conceptually motivated by metaphor and metonymy.