Motivace pojmenování a lidová etymologie v českých a finských toponymech obsahujících barevná označení ČERNÁ a BÍLÁ
Naming motivation and folk etymology of Czech and Finnish toponyms containing the colour terms BLACK and WHITE

Summary/Abstract: The terms denoting BLACK and WHITE appear in (almost) all languages. Often,they are the only colour terms the language has and in this case they refer not only toblack and white but to different shades of grey and to the presence or absence of lightas well, thus having a much wider semantic scope. The inventory of basic colourterms in Czech and Finnish contains more expressions than these two, however intoponyms the most frequent colour terms are BLACK and WHITE which at the sametime show the qualities of macrocolours. Despite the differences in the landscape andlanguage, the colour terms in toponyms of both areas tend to show certain similarities,e.g. the wider semantics of a macrocolour, or similar ways when explaining thesenames. These explanations seem to be reflecting more the naming motivation thanbeing a “naive” folk etymology made up later. This actually testifies about the universalityof colour perception and conception which is more permanent and obviousin toponyms than in other appellatives, regardless of the language, than of randomexplanations created by the users.

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