Rhetorical Figures in Mosuo Village Names in Yunnan and the Concrete Thinking They Reflect
This article examines rhetorical devices used in naming Mosuo-language natural villages in Ninglang County, Yunnan, and what they reveal about the figurative (concrete-image) thinking of the Mosuo people. Since Ninglang lacks a published gazetteer and prior scholarship is scarce, the authors combined field investigation, textual verification, and historical documents (notably the 1933 "Complete Regional Map of Yunnan's Counties") to compile and analyze 157 Mosuo village names, including some later renamed in Chinese. Most names derive from a location's distinctive natural features or associated historical events, encoding topography, landforms, and local history. The study identifies four main rhetorical strategies: metaphor/simile (both explicit "simile-style" and implicit "metaphor-style" names comparing landforms to familiar objects like ladles, trays, canoes, doors, or wings), personification/analogy (using terms for people or animals, e.g., "tail," "tiger"), descriptive depiction, and metonymy. These figures make village names vivid and concrete, demonstrating that early Mosuo ancestors relied heavily on associative, image-based (concrete) cognition—linking unfamiliar terrain to familiar everyday objects, animals, and human bodily/social features—when naming their environment.
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