Nazwy z Nowego Świata w opracowanych po czesku szesnastowiecznych tekstach o wielkich odkryciach geograficznych
The Names from the New World in Czech Texts on Geographical Discoveries from the 16th Century

Summary/Abstract: The Names from the New World in Czech Texts on Geographical Discoveries from the 16th Century The first Czech texts about new discoveries were the Czech issue of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography, translated by Zikmund from Púchov, and Mikuláš Bakalár’s Spis o nových zemiech a o Novém svete. In these two old prints, there are many names from the New World which were at all not known before. Since Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, there were a lot of other people, such as Ferdinand Magellan or Amerigo Vespucci, who tried to reach more unknown lands and explore them. All of them were widely spoken about in 16th century Europe, especially at West-European courts and in big cities. Such small countries as the Kingdom of Bohemia had hardly any information about these phenomena, which changed the history and the way of thinking. In these texts the names describe objects mainly in the area of the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, North and South America, Indian Ocean, Oceania and Indochina. According to traditional linguistic theories, words and expression which are to be incorporated into the system of a new language must be fitted into its grammatical structure. Thus, they are a very useful material which shows how these new words were adapted into the Czech grammatical system on each level: phonetic, morphological and syntactic. The analysis of these lexical items will enable us to present linguistic changes both in speech and writing. Some of these words were fully adapted, some of them only partially, the other ones in a small degree. The other aim of the research is to examine the relation between language and culture regarding to completely new and unknown things. The names from the New World in the analyzed texts are proper names which can be classified as exonyms. An exonym is a domestic form of a foreign geographical name. Exonyms, as all proper names, have their onymic functions, and there is always one dominant function which refers to the receivers of the communication process. The 16th century Czech texts on the New World were created in order to inform people about the new phenomena which were to change their cognition.

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