Pirmieji lietuviški Kauno paminėjimai
The first reference to the Lithuanian city name Kaunas

Summary/Abstract: The first Lithuanian book containing the city name Kaunas (in a Lithuanian form) was Postilla by Mikalojus Daukša, printed in 1599. This toponym was included in a note in the section for Errata. It supplies noteworthy dialectological data: forms like the conjunction bat and aĩti are characteristic of the speech of Kaunas boatmen, traders, and “other scapegraces” (of a low strata of society), and therefore unusable. These forms were used at the beginning of Postilla, sent to the printer earlier in 1595. The forms bat and aĩti were traits not merely of Kaunas laborers’ speech, but of Daukša’s native dialect as well. Later on Daukša rejected them. The linguistic note was added to explain the reason the language in the initial part of Postilla was to be corrected. The second appearance of the toponym Kaunas is known from the Grammatica Litvanica by Danielius Kleinas, printed in 1653. Kaunas was mentioned twice: among the exceptions to the rule that defines the gender of nouns and in an example that illustrates a mode of spatial expression (kełauju ing Kauna ‘I travel to Kaunas’). In another grammar by Klein, Compendium Litvanico-Germanicum (1654), the first known Lithuanian form of naming a denizen of Kaunas is given (Kaunónis).

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