Příspěvek k lidové etymologii pomístních jmen ‒ na příkladu anoikonym ze Sedlčanska
A contribution to the study of folk etymology in place names: based on the example of anoikonyms in the Sedlčany region

Summary/Abstract: Folk etymology is usually characterized as an erroneous etymological-semantic interpretationof a word. So far, the research of this phenomenon in the Czech context hasfocused almost exclusively on appellatives and oikonyms (names of settlements); folketymology in anoikonyms (names of non-settlement objects) has been the subject ofresearch very rarely.Therefore, the aim of this paper is to fill this gap by presenting a case study based onan analyse of folk etymologies in anoikonyms in the Sedlčany region in the CentralBohemia. It analyses and compares the scholarly and folk etymologies in ten chosenanoikonyms. The main goal of the research is to identify both linguistic and non-linguisticfactors leading to the development of folk etymology and affecting its formand result.The linguistic factors can be identified on lexical-semantic, word-formative and phoneticlevels. The affected names usually contain low frequency appellatives (e. g. dialect,archaic words), and their form can be also affected by various sound changes.The language users create a new interpretation of an etymologically non-transparentname by association with an acoustically similar word, often using not only theirfantasy, but in some cases also a very good knowledge of the named object and itssurroundings.

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