The article is devoted to the study of the features of the metaphorization of toponyms in Russian and Arabic. During the study, more than 1350 articles using metaphorical toponyms were analyzed using the methods of comparative analysis, contextual analysis, descriptive analysis, and quantitative analysis. Studying the works of different researchers on toponyms proved that any toponym has some kind of cultural component, which contributes to the metaphorization of some toponyms. When metaphorizing toponyms turn into symbols. Russian and Arabic journalists metaphorize toponyms, since the metaphor not only expresses the attitude of the author, his assessment of this or that phenomenon of reality, but also influences the reader’s opinion. Toponymic metaphors evoke many additional associations and awaken the cultural memory of the addressee. Some toponyms are subject to deonymization, which is manifested in their writing with a lowercase letter and the use in the plural. According to our observations, the largest group of our material is represented by those toponyms that are associated with war events, which is a natural result of the relevance of the topic “War” in the life of any nation. The toponyms of our material are usually accompanied by territorial, temporal and so on characteristics.