Onomastica

Walter Wenzel: 20. January 1929 - 17. June 2025

2025-12-31T11:02:38+00:00

Terminological and conceptual characteristics of the phenomenon of the onymic landscape as elements building the linguistic landscape

2025-12-31T11:02:41+00:00

This paper offers a theoretical contribution to the conceptualization and definition of a relatively recent notion in onomastic and humanistic research: the Onymic Landscape (OL). The analysis is grounded in the assumption that OL constitutes a component of the Linguistic Landscape (LL), with LL serving as the hyperonymic category (OL ⊂ LL). However, the author argues that OL is not merely a subordinate element, but often functions as a foundational component within LL units. These units are examined both in terms of their material manifestations and intersemiotic properties. The paper presents an extensive and structured classification of the onymic objects observable in OL. These include, among others, inscriptions on road signs, information boards, advertising media, the signage of commercial establishments, as well as less conventional, literally mobile carriers, such as personalized vehicle nameplates or route indicators on public transportation. The theoretical framework and proposed typology are illustrated with photographic material collected in Poland. The concept of OL, as developed here, offers a complementary and revisionist perspective on traditional understandings of LL perspectives that, albeit implicitly, already attest to the central role played by proper names in the composition of linguistic landscapes.

Notes on the antroponymy of the 16th century based on historical documents of the Zhytomyr region

2025-12-31T11:02:45+00:00

A fragment of the 16th-century anthroponymicon of the Zhytomyr region is described. Based on the historical sources utilized, the process of the formation of Ukrainian anthroponyms in one of the oldest ethnically stable areas of the Eastern Slavs is examined. Through the documented names of settlements whose origins are associated with anthroponyms (clarified each time using historical-etymological analysis), particularly those that preserve traces of pre-Christian naming and point to archaic linguistic features of local traditions, it was possible to reconstruct a series of anthroponyms: Radamysl, Khoten, Yarun, and others. Despite the predominance of patronymic forms with the suffixes -ych, -evych/-ovych in the names of settlements of the region, it was possible to find a continuation of the earlier tradition which was based on name-derived settlement names. There are not many of them, but they are of particular interest due to the names they present, their word formation structure, especially with the suffix *-ęt-. Despite the fact that the anthroponyms fixed in the bases of local oikonyms are structurally poorer (due to their one-component nature) than the two and three-part anthroponyms already in use at that time, their informative value in terms of restoring the Old Ukrainian noun is invaluable. The coexistence of old and new anthroponymic formulas in new historical conditions is evidenced by the sources we used. The number of anthroponyms examined is sufficient to draw conclusions about the common anthroponymic formulas used among both commoners and the elite representatives. While there is a significant number of anthroponymic formulas with the suffixes -ych, -evych, -ovych, the absence of patronymic expressions with the suffix -enko, characteristic of other parts of Ukraine in the 16th century, is notable, particularly in the anthroponymy of Zhytomyr Castle. The anthroponymic formulas of the studied region in the 16th century undoubtedly underwent stabilization. Compared to the previous period, there is a noticeable increase in the number of two- and three-membered anthroponyms. It is too early, however, to talk about cardinal changes at this time.

Features of personal identification in the primary tax registers of the Zvyagel Volost in the second half of the 16th century (part 1)

2025-12-31T11:02:51+00:00

The purpose of the work is to analyze the anthroponymic of the primary tax registers of the Zvyagel Volost from 1570–1571 and 1576: to describe the word-forming variants of names, primarily male Christian names, which most frequently appear in monolexemic designations and two-lexemic anthroponymic formulas. The research is based on the “Primary Tax Registers of Zvyagel Volost in the Second Half of the 16th Century”, prepared for publication by V. Atamanenko (2024) from the manuscript “Vinnytsia Grodskyi sud”. The study employs a descriptive method, including inventory and systematization of lexical material, as well as linguistic techniques such as lexical-semantic, etymological, and word-formation analysis. The scientific novelty of the proposed article lies in the fact that for the first time the subject of scientific study was the naming of the primary levy registers of the 70s–80s of the 16th century of the Zvyahelsk volost as one of the oldest sources of a descriptive and statistical nature, reflecting the then state of these landholdings.
The tax registers of the Zvyagel volost from 1570–1571 and 1576 predominantly feature monolexemic designations, most of which are male Christian names of various structures: full, truncated, truncated-suffixal, and suffixal. The most frequent are suffixal variants of male Christian personal names with the suffix ‑k(o). The names Mykhailo, Hryhorei, Danylo, and Semen exhibit the highest number of word-formation variants. Other names have fewer variants, including Vasyl, Ivan, Lavryn, Pavel, Petr, Trukhon, and others. The name Fedor stands out for its diversity in both word formation and phonetic-graphic variants. Additionally, several female Christian personal names are recorded: Varusha, Ha(n)ka, Matruna, Ωvdo(t)ia, Ωryna, and Prosymka. Further study of the primary conscription registers of the Zvyagel Volost of the second half of the 16th century will make it possible to determine the features of composite, decomposite, and appellative Slavic names and the specificity of two-locem anthroponymic formulas.

Living (unofficial) personal names of unmarried persons in the solitary-cottages village of Prašník in the Piešťany district

2025-12-31T11:03:00+00:00

This paper deals with the unofficial anthroponymy of a class of unmarried persons in one of the villages in the district of Piešt’any, which has a predominantly hill-dwelling character (the solitary-cottages village). The ordering of the models in terms of frequency reflects the current state of knowledge in several living (unofficial) anthroponymic systems, with the models based on the official naming system coming first. The relatively high frequency of family names with an anthropobase identical to the anthropobase of the house name, the occurrence of individual characteristics, as well as family names with a surname anthropobase that nevertheless differ in form from the official surnames, indicate that the living (unofficial) naming system still persists. It not only forms the colour of the village and its language, but also belongs to the traditions of the local community and, as such, is part of the national cultural heritage.

The nickname as an anthroponymic category in Shukshin’s stories

2025-12-31T13:04:17+00:00

Nicknames, as the most expressive exponent of the environmental aspect of rural prose, occupy an important place in the onomastic layer of V. M. Shukshin’s stories, constituting an important element of the namesake presentation of the protagonists, even more important than official names, which in the analysed works often play the role of a complementary means of nomination. Thanks to this procedure, the writer draws attention to the tradition of nicknames and their use in everyday life by small, closed communities, which identify their members by means of anthroponyms created in accordance with the generally applicable norm, a particular feature of their spoken language. The purpose of this article is to describe the specific functioning of nickname anthroponyms in Shukshin’s work and to show the impact that these particular types of personal names have on the interpretation of a literary text. This requires reading the narrative perspective in the analysed stories, as well as going beyond traditional approaches to onomastics and reaching for interdisciplinary research tools specific to stylistics and cultural linguistics. The analysis shows that nicknames, as a means of the characterisation of characters in general, appearing in the material studied also in the title-forming function, have a specific semantic and cultural potential. On the one hand, the anthroponym used in the title is closely correlated with the semantic structure of the work bearing it (it creates new meanings thanks to the contexts in which it appears and the words with which it is combined), and on the other hand, it may function outside it, as a component of the cultural heritage of a given linguistic community. The linguistic and cultural knowledge of the recipient of the text is crucial in the process of deciphering the meaning of a given name.

Flowers, plants and trees in female naming in China

2025-12-31T11:03:10+00:00

The paper deals with various linguistic and cultural aspects of Chinese given names constructed out of the linguistic items/lexemes/terms denoting flowers, plants, and trees. Special attention is paid to female naming, as the comparison of women to flowers is a common tendency in many cultures all over the world, including in Chinese culture. The paper discusses 17 Chinese terms denoting plants, flowers, and trees that were of the highest frequency of occurrences among the top 150 terms/lexical items/characters used in female names in the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) at the beginning of the 1980s. The current frequency of these terms is compared with the Internet list of the 150 most common terms/characters presently used in female and male naming in the PRC (approximately the years 2020–2024). It seems evident that the popularity of terms and names after flowers, plants, and trees has decreased, and it may be attributed, among others, to the tendency of Chinese people to opt to create more unisex personal names, and to avoid overt sex stereotyping, particularly in the context of women and female names.

Some notes on peripheral items and features in eponymy

2025-12-31T11:03:12+00:00

The article’s subject matter is the study of eponymy from the viewpoint of the opposition between centre vs. periphery, both externally (i.e., concerning eponymy as a whole) and internally. The author argues that eponymy itself is a peripheral category regarding deappellative formation, since the semantics of eponymic inner form, while sharing common features with the latter (such as metaphor and metonymy), can also manifest ones that are unique to it (sanctifying, honorific, commemorative, and image-creating naming). Proceeding from the broad understanding of eponymy (as represented by any linguistic entity, both lexical and phrasal, formed with the help of proper nouns) as well as the three main parameters of the eponymic relationship (the underlying name, the derived eponym, and the relation thereof), the author proposes an approach to the said problem along these parameters. Then he concentrates on those peripheral eponymic entities and features that are linked to underlying names’ characteristics. There he investigates transitory cases (most of them informal epithets), working out their tentative typology (eponyms derived from artificial proper names, eponyms with reinterpreted underlying items, and eponyms with double underlying items), and substantiating it with evidence drawn from Ukrainian, Polish, English, and other languages. Finally, he discusses cases in which the reinterpretation of inner form components was influenced by their functioning in ideological and propagandist discourse.

A fragment of the oikonymic landscape of the Right-Bank Polissia and adjacent territories in the 14th century: The area and semantics of the derivational bases of archaic types of geographical names

2025-12-31T11:03:16+00:00

The purpose of this research is to analyse the oikonymic landscape of the Right-Bank Polissia in the 14th century. In order to achieve the defined goal, a number of tasks were formulated, namely: to identify in written memos the 14th century dated geographical names of the Right-Bank Polissia ending in *-ьn-, *-ьsk-, *-any/*-jany, *-itji, *-j-, *-ov-/*-ev-, *-in-; to analyse the derivational bases of these archaic types of oikonyms; and to visualize their areas of distribution. The scientific novelty of this article is that archaic types of geographical names of the Right-Bank Polissia in the 14th century, as a chronological fragment of linguistic stratigraphy, have not yet been studied. The systematic analysis of historical and empirical material allows us to analyse the creative basis of these geographical names and to visualise their distribution during this historical period.

The archaic oyconymy of the Right-Bank Polissia in the 14th century is represented by seven types of names ending in: *-ьn-, *-ьsk-, *-any/*-jany, *-itji, *-j-, *-ov-/*-ev-, *-in-, which form three main groups: 1) oikonyms derived from relative adjectives; 2) plural oikonyms formed from ethnonyms or names of groups of people based on certain characteristics; 3) oikonyms genetically related to possessive adjectives. The analysis of the derivational bases of these oikonyms and the identified types of geographical names indicates that the Right-Bank Polissia has been inhabited by Slavs since ancient times. The anthroponymic evidence from possessive geographical names ending in *-j-,*-ov-/*-ev-,*-in- suggests that this historical territory is ethnically Slavic, particularly Ukrainian, as the repertoire of personal names corresponds to the anthroponymicon of Ukraine, including Old Slavic compound and derived anthroponyms, personal names of appellative origin, and Christian names adapted to the Slavic declension system through suffixation.

The extent of archaic oikonymy in the Right-Bank Polissia is part of the wider all-Slavic area. Each archaic type in the 14th century had its own configuration, but spatial visualisation shows that clusters of oikonyms were concentrated mainly around ancient Slavic (Ukrainian) settlement centres.

Motivational factors behind the adoption of biblical place names in different parts of the world

2025-12-31T11:03:23+00:00

This paper examines the potential motivational factors behind the adoption of place names of biblical origin in distinct parts of the world. In Europe, the use of biblical place names for newly established settlements began in the Middle Ages, in accordance with the prevailing intellectual orientation of the era. The biblical place name may have been transferred to a European settlement metaphorically, based on the actual or perceived similarity of the environment or population; metonymically, by adopting the title of the local church referring to a biblical place; or symbolically, because of the remoteness of the place. In medieval Hungary, however, relevant settlement names were mostly derived from personal names developed from biblical place names, and typically identified the early owners of the settlements. In contrast, many recent Hungarian minor names of biblical toponymic references are either metaphorical or ironic in nature. The transfer of biblical place names to North America during the Age of Exploration, Colonisation and Immigration was often a symbolic act. Initially, these names were used by settlers to reflect their Christian values and commitment, or to comment on the circumstances of the founding of their settlements. Later, as pioneers migrated westwards to establish new settlements, they occasionally commemorated their hometowns or European birthplaces that bore biblical place names by repeating their names in the Wild West. Place names of biblical origin have often been transferred, sometimes in clusters, to various other settlements around the world as a result of missionary zeal or commendation. The adoption and use of place names from the Bible has contributed to the transmission and preservation of Christian religious heritage through the connotative expressiveness of toponyms.

The toponymy of the City of Visoko

2025-12-31T11:03:28+00:00

The paper examines the toponyms of the City of Visoko. First, a brief overview of the history and population in Visoko was given, with an emphasis on the importance of the medieval period, when Visoko was also the place where Bosnian kings reigned. Then, the most important features of the speech of Visoko and previous research were presented, followed by an analysis of toponyms. A qualitative method was used, i.e. analysis of a smaller sample, on the basis of which broader conclusions can be assumed, and they should be verified by further research. All of the toponyms of Visoko are divided according to the motivation of their origin into those conditioned by the natural environment, human activity and anthroponyms, within which more precise subcategories are derived, then according to the formation models, and at the end an overview of dialectal features is given. This research was also an attempt to discover Ikavian toponyms which could testify to the fact that Visoko was once Ikavian, as stated in the literature. After the research, no remains of Ikavian speech were found in the toponymy of Visoko, so it is assumed that Visoko probably was not Ikavian after all. A list of microtoponyms and a map are attached.

The Czech onymic landscape and the memory of World War II in urbanonymy

2025-12-31T11:03:34+00:00

An integral part of the urban onymic landscape are various monuments, commemorative plaques, and Stolpersteine with the names of martyred, executed, or fallen persons. In addition, the names of streets and public spaces also commemorate WWII. This study will focus on these urbanonyms associated with war events and will be based on the official online list of street names, which is managed by the Czech Land Survey and Cadastral Office. These urbanonyms can be divided according to motivation: those devoted to the resistance and its participants (e.g. Pražského povstání ‘Prague Uprising’, Gabčíkova), Nazi crimes (e.g. Lidická > massacred inhabitants of the village of Lidice), places of important battles (e.g. Sokolovská > Sokolovo), politicians, military commanders, and ordinary soldiers (e.g. náměstí Winstona Churchilla), key dates (8. května ‘8 May’), abstract ideas (e.g. Vítězství ‘Victory’), etc. They reflect the time of their creation and the contemporary ideologi-cal view on events, which is also related to the later re-evaluation of some names (e.g. the renaming of Koněvova Street in 2023).

The category of dialogic memory in hodonymy

2025-12-31T11:03:36+00:00

The purpose of the article is to introduce the category of dialogic memory proposed by Myszka (2022), based on Asmann’s (2014) definition, into the study of the linguistic dimension of space. The text aims to indicate the possibility of the onomastic research of memory symbolism in the urban space (cf. Rutkowski and Skowronek 2020).
The work focuses on society‘s creation of space through language, especially on such activities that draw on memory resources that deviate from the mainstream of national commemoration, i.e. dialogic memory.
We studied the defined category of dialogic memory using 9,043 records in three different urban spaces: Torun, Lodz, and Warsaw. For each of them, we adopted different assumptions of dialogic memory, as cultural-ethnic-religious, historical-political and multicultural (non-Polish) identification, selecting them from a post-war perspective as “itching” and in various ways passing for “uncomfortable” parts of the identity of these spaces. In the case of Toruń we ask about the commemoration of the Prussians who were important for the city’s history, in Warsaw we look for traces of the city’s Jewish history, while in Lodz we analyse the memories of the local multiethnic community. Consideration of the category of dialogic memory is important in reflecting on the role of language in urban space, and allows us to answer the question of whether the once physically shared urban space is (still) a shared space of memory, and how much space in the constructed environment we now devote to commemoration. In addition, the study aimed to identify a bundle of qualities desired by collective memory as a criterion for access to the city’s linguistic identity.

The political lives of rural hodonyms in Ukraine: A cross-regional perspective

2025-12-31T11:03:41+00:00

Rural toponyms have a long history of research with an emphasis on their historical and cultural significance. However, insufficient attention has been paid specifically to the ideologically driven naming and renaming of rural places. This gap becomes even more noticeable concerning the post-socialist and, especially, post-Soviet spaces, representing one of the modern hotspots in the critical study of place names. In the paper, based on the information on the naming and renaming of rural streets in the three Ukrainian administrative regions, we analyse the recent reconfiguration of the contemporary system of Ukrainian rural hodonyms from a political standpoint. It has been demonstrated that rural street names in Ukraine are involved in the political life of the country almost as much as their urban counterparts, and their post-Soviet reconfiguration in cross-regional perspective generally resembles the processes and patterns relevant to the urban street names. The role of rural hodonyms as political instruments and symbolic markers should not be underestimated, at least, for certain geographical and socio-cultural contexts. At the same time, the active involvement of rural street names in the political life of the country raises concerns about their preservation as a part of local heritage and markers of local identity.

Names of pharmacies from pharmacy signboards in the onymic landscape of Poland: The geographical, historical and cultural background of their creation

2025-12-31T11:03:45+00:00

The focus of this article is the characterization of one of the oldest types of Polish pharmacy names from pharmacy emblems, which have developed a kind of model which is subject to continuation. It is not only realized by terms inherited from the past, but also by newer structures of an imitative character, structurally referring to the oldest naming tradition. They illustrate the past of the diverse regions that formerly belonged to the Prussian, Russian and Austrian partition of the erstwhile Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and, consequently, outline the cultural influences of these respective areas. In this regard, it is possible to speak not only of a characteristic stratigraphy of pharmacy names from signboards, but also of their diverse bases, dominated by the names of animals and plants that symbolize immortality, resurrection, longevity, energy, as well as the metals important in alchemy (such as gold, silver or tin). Signboards related to pharmacy, alchemy or astrology are not as common, while references to the sacral sphere or to mythology are rare.

Proper names and the culture of esotericism (based on Polish pre-war press, 1919-1939)

2025-12-31T13:06:44+00:00

The article has an onomastic and cultural studies character. Its main aim is to describe the relationship between the nomenclatural layer of articles published in six Polish interwar (1919–1939) esoteric magazines of Cieszyn Silesia (Hejnał ‘Bugle Call’, Lotos ‘Lotus’, Odrodzenie ‘Rebirth’, Teozofia ‘Theosophy’, Wiedza Duchowa ‘Spiritual Knowledge’, Wyzwolenie ‘Liberation’) and the features of the cultural trend called esoterism The study seeks onimic exponents of the culture of esoterism (in its European and Polish/local edition). The conceptual framework of the work is a symbolic-hermeneutic conception of culture. Questions are posed concerning, among other things: the capacity of proper names to symbolise cultural ideas (esoteric ideas in particular), the presence of specific textual mechanisms that foster this capacity for symbolisation.
The study is of a qualitative nature. The following were analysed and interpreted textologically and discursologically: the proper names and the textual mechanisms in which they participate (e.g. onymic enumeration, functional anonymity) and their capacity to symbolise certain esoteric ideas (such as the syncretism of different religions, temporalism, spiritual development, the ambition to achieve the status of a “new science”). The proper names, despite their low frequency, proved to be exponents of the essential features of the ideology and culture of esotericism. Their high degree of symbolism (as in the case of journal titles or onimic enumerations) points to the assumption, fundamental to esotericism, that the world is permeated by hidden signs that point to spiritual truths.

The nomenclature of Kraków charity organisations and institutions in the Second Polish Republic period

2025-12-31T11:03:54+00:00

The purpose of the article is the description of the names of charity associations and institutions. The nomenclature of charitable work up until now has not been the object of closer analysis, even though it is one of the most developed areas of activity among people who are socially engaged, and has a long tradition. The described group of names refers to the Second Polish Republic — a period in which organised aid activities intensified particularly owing to post-war devastation and the significant impoverishment of society. The collected onymic structures from archive resources were analysed on the basis of the theoretical-methodological approach presented in the works from the field of chrematonomastics by Artur Gałkowski. The analysis concerned two main aspects: structural and lexical-semantic.
In terms of structure, the described names do not differ from those of other associations — most of them take the form of a multi-part nominal group connected by syntactic links. They also have a descriptive character, whereas distinctive components seldom appear among them.
The specific nature of the discussed socioideonyms is also reflected in the choice of lexical components, in which features characterising the group are clear and which point to: the type of activity, the object of charitable work, the associated people, as well as the values in which they believe, whose markers are references to religion and deanthroponymic elements, most commonly designating saints regarded as patrons of those in need.
Thanks to the semantic clarity of common words used in the names of charity associations, these onymic structures can be interpreted as direct references to the world of ideals promoted by the associated people, components which build the identity of the group and shape its image within the society in which they operate.
The next stage of research work will be the comparison of names from the Second Polish Republic period with the names of contemporary charity organisations in order to capture the development trends in this area.

Daylily variety names as a carrier of national and regional values

2026-01-19T10:16:04+00:00

Although much has been written about the names of flowers in the literature, the names of their varieties created by individual creators have not been studied so far. Meanwhile, they constitute a large collection, as evidenced by the fact that one flower species can occur in several thousand varieties. This data is confirmed by the national collection of daylilies gathered in the Arboretum in Wojsławice, which numbers over 4,000 varieties. From this collection, I have excerpted 416 phytonyms referring to varieties bred in Poland and at the same time referring to national and regional motifs. They can be treated as a carrier of cultural memory as their national and regional character is associated with the history and geography of Poland or its selected regions. Creators of proprias are most often inspired by historical figures or those active in the field of culture, as well as titles of literary and musical works and toponyms (e.g. oikonyms, oronyms and hydronyms). The name of an element of nature (plant) was used as a carrier of certain ideas and knowledge about Poland and its regions. The combination of material reality with ideational reality is not only conducive to perpetuating certain values in collective memory, but also to their creation. For guests of the arboretum, including foreigners, contact with nature becomes an opportunity to commune with Polish national and regional culture.

Onim, proprium, nazwa własna. Terminology use in onomastics and the terminological potential of terminological forms

2025-12-31T11:04:04+00:00

The aim of this paper is to outline the potential of the basic Polish onomastic terminological forms (such as nazwa własna, nazwa, onim, proprium, and nomen proprium) in term-building reproduction and compare it with the actual current usage of terminology by onomasticians publishing in Polish. Additionally, an attempt is made to verify whether the assumed larger potential of the basic international form onim results in using terms with the stem -onim in Polish texts more frequently than (usually) synonymous multi-word Polish terms composed of the noun nazwa and an adjective referring to the category of named objects. A further goal is to measure whether terminological neologisms based on the stem -onim are adopted by numerous authors or rather their frequent use remains limited only to those who coined them. As far as the term-building reproductive potential is concerned, the methodology consisted in creating a table with potential terms based on the basic terminological forms listed above and created within the limits set by the word-building and syntactic rules of the Polish language. The potential assessed this way was compared with actual use empirically measured by means of a simple corpus compiled with the Sketch Engine and consisting of 134 articles published in the journal Onomastica between 2015 and 2023. In the quantitative analysis the following corpus-based inventories were deployed: 1) lemmas containing the character string onim, 2) z lemmas containing the character string propri, 3) concordances of nazw* własn* and nazwa własny, 4) concordances of the lemma onim, 5) concordances of the lemma proprium, and 6) concordances of the lemma propria. The results and findings comprise inter alia the following ones: the main and central concept of onomastics is referred to with the Polish term nazwa własna significantly more often than with the international expression onim. On the other hand, authors write more frequently in the journal Onomastica about antroponimy and antroponimia than about nazwa osobowa and nazwy osobowe. Finally, the reported research provided an empirical evidence of the clearly mixed (Polish and international) quality of Polish onomastic terminology.

A reflection on onomastic topics in Czech linguistic journals

2025-12-31T11:04:21+00:00

The study aims to describe the extent to which onomastics and onomastic issues have appeared from the beginning of the 20th century to the present as a topic in generally oriented Czech linguistic or linguistic-didactic journals. The material base of the analysis consists of the periodicals “Časopis pro moderní filologii” (1911–2024), “Naše řeč” (1917–2024), “Slovo a slovesnost” (1935–2024) and “Český jazyk a literatura” (1950–2024), from which texts (studies, articles, reports) focusing on onomastic topics (the field of anthroponyms, toponyms, and chrematonyms) are excerpted. Through qualitative analysis based on reading individual texts and detecting the issues addressed, the study primarily seeks to determine whether and to what extent Czech linguistics has paid attention to onomastics as a partial linguistic discipline throughout the 20th century. Furthermore, the study also examines how the focus on onomastics in selected linguistic journals has changed over time in relation to the development of the theoretical and methodological approaches in this field (e.g. collection of minor place names, model analysis, functional conception, quantitative turn) or the character of specific periodicals, or whether particular personalities have played a role in the presentation of onomastics in selected periodicals. The conducted qualitative analysis indicates that the selection and presentation of onomastic topics are significantly influenced by the character of the individual periodicals and the emancipation of onomastics in the 1960s.

Old Russian one-stem deappellative anthroponyms containing suffixes with -k-: -kа, -аk, -аkа, -ъkъ/-ьkъ, -ik

2025-12-31T11:04:29+00:00

Affixal derivation of one-stem deappellative anthroponyms has not been widely discussed so far in Old Russian. In previous studies the analysis has essentially been focused on anthroponyms without word-formation exponents in relation to the common names motivating them. The exception was one-stem deappellative personal names that were derived paradigmatically. Other issues of morphological structure of Slavic one-stem personal names that differ from common names motivating them have been overlooked until now and need to be studied.
Our first article discussed one-stem deappellative personal names with suffix -ko that were recorded in the 15th–17th century texts. The aim of this paper is to present Old Russian one-stem deappellative anthroponyms containing other suffixes with -k-, i.e. -kа, -аk, -аkа, *-ъkъ/*-ьkъ, -ik, selected from the sources mentioned above. The analysis distinguishes between: 1. derivatives created in the onomastic plane; 2. anthroponyms created in the appellative-onomastic plane.

Adaptation of Korean city names to the Polish language — history of standardization and usage

2025-12-31T11:04:34+00:00

The article addresses the issue of adapting Korean city names into Polish, analyzing both specific examples and the broader context of historical changes in their transcription. Particular attention is given to the standardization of names by the Commission on Standardization of Geographical Names Outside the Republic of Poland, official state documents concerning proper names, and actual linguistic usage, which does not always align with official recommendations.
The aim of the study is to identify the mechanisms influencing the formation of the names of six Korean cities (Pjongjang, Panmundżom, Czedżu, Pusan, Pjongczang, Inczon) and to trace the forms of these names currently used in various types of texts. The research employs comparative analysis methods, examining historical and contemporary sources, standardization norms, and current usage in media and literature.
The study explores the impact of different transcription systems, such as the McCune-Reischauer romanization and the South Korean system introduced in 2000 and revised in 2007, on the names adopted in Poland. It also considers adaptation to Polish phonetics and morphology. The results indicate that the Polonized names do not contain diacritical marks or digraphs.
A gradual unification of name usage under the influence of linguistic organization guidelines can be observed, although some commonly used variants still deviate from standard norms and lack consistency within individual texts.
One issue arising from this diversity of spellings is the potential difficulty for readers in recognizing city names and this is an aspect also discussed in the article. The text highlights the importance of consistently using selected forms of city names within a given publication to avoid situations where three different naming guidelines appear within the same text.

In Poland, that is nowhere: on the margins of Mariusz Rutkowski’s monograph “Wojownik, poeta, kapłan. Onimiczne figury polskości w nazwach ulic”

2025-12-31T11:04:39+00:00

5th Czech Onomastic Conference (Prague, 7–10 April 2025)

2025-12-31T11:04:40+00:00

Report from the 5th Czech Onomastic Conference.

Professor Maria Karpluk (1925–2016)

2025-12-31T11:04:41+00:00

Professor Kazimierz Rymut (1935–2006)

2025-12-31T11:04:42+00:00