Abstract
Personal names are often treated as arbitrary identifiers; however, many anthroponyms preserve metaphorical meanings that reflect how cultures conceptualize the human person. This paper examines conceptual metaphors underlying English and Uzbek personal names and demonstrates that naming practices frequently map the target domain PERSON onto source domains such as NATURE, LIGHT AND CELESTIAL BODIES, VIRTUE, POWER, and PRECIOUS OBJECTS. Using a qualitative cognitive-semantic approach and representative examples from both traditions, the analysis shows that while English and Uzbek share several core metaphorical patterns, they differ in metaphor salience, symbolic elaboration, and cultural anchoring. The study contributes to cognitive onomastics by illustrating how metaphor operates in naming as a culturally embedded mechanism of meaning construction.
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