The Semantics of Igbo Animal Names: Metaphor, Cultural Classification, and Environmental Knowledge

This study investigates the semantics of Igbo animal names, examining the metaphorical structures, cultural classification principles, and encoded environmental knowledge embedded within the Igbo zoonymic lexicon. Igbo animal nomenclature constitutes a rich ethnosemantic domain that has received only fragmentary treatment in existing Igbo lexicographic and cultural linguistics scholarship, leaving its systematic structure largely undescribed. The research builds a corpus of over six hundred animal names through elicitation interviews with sixty elder speakers and hunters from communities in Imo, Anambra, and Enugu states, supplemented by analysis of published Igbo dictionaries and oral literature collections. Semantic analysis employs cognitive linguistic tools including conceptual metaphor theory, prototype theory, and ethnobiological classification principles. Findings document a systematic zoonymic classification structure organised around six primary cultural-ecological criteria: habitat association, behavioural traits, physical morphology, spiritual significance, economic utility, and mythological association. Metaphorical naming, in which animal names encode transferred human social meanings, is identified in approximately thirty-three percent of the corpus. The study also documents significant regional variation in animal nomenclature reflecting differential ecological environments across Igbo communities. Seventeen animal names encoded in Igbo folktales are found to carry archaic ecological knowledge about species behaviour that aligns with contemporary zoological observation. Keywords: Igbo animal names, semantics, cognitive linguistics, ethnoecology, metaphor.