Research in general, and research on friendship in particular, uses metaphors and analogies, and research itself can be seen in analogy with map making. This chapter takes us on a meandering walk along mono- and multidisciplinary inquiries into friendship as seen from many perspectives, like that of history and philosophy of science (that has analogical modelling as a canonical style of reasoning) and semiotics, to reflect on the uses of metaphor and analogy. Semiotics as founded by C. S. Peirce is the science of representations, how representational devices relate to their objects and how the meaning generated depends upon context and interpretation. Metaphor and analogy are such representational tools, at once cognitive and common as we all use them to think with, but also specialized within the sciences and humanities where they can be used in effective and misleading ways. It is shown how the general map analogy can be semiotically analysed as a diagram and how its general form can be applied to the aspects of friendship that concerns the friends’ knowledge of Self and Other. We not only think, but also do things with metaphors, such as transforming a friend into some kin, or vice versa.