All cases of use of animal nominations in relation to man from Pskov regional dictionary (issues 1-27) are examined in the article. The article describes the use of hyperonyms зверь and животина in relation to man. The affectionate names (голубка, кошенька) and abusive names (змей, вошь) as well as nicknames were considered. The reasons of using the names of animals in relation to people are identified. The group of human nominations by the names of animals by external similarity contains nouns motivated by a noticeable distinctive feature (skinny person - мотылёк, big man - медведь, a woman with freckles - куропатка). In the group of nominations for behaviour there are subgroups such as stupidity (баран), laziness (налим), intrusiveness (клещ) and others. In the group of nominations for similarities in action there are subgroups such as "one who works hard" (конь), "one who is moving one way or another" (паук and others. A group of nominations is allocated, correlated with any number of people (выводок). The names of animals that have different reasons for transferring to humans have been described (лиса). The results of the study are summarised.