Czech Toponyms of Foreign Origin as Witnesses of Multicultural Contacts in Central Europe

0338866 - ÚJČ 2010 RIV CA eng C - Conference Paper (international conference)
Harvalík, Milan
Czech Toponyms of Foreign Origin as Witnesses of Multicultural Contacts in Central Europe.
Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact. Toronto: York University, 2009 - (Ahrens, W.; Embleton, S.; Lapierre, A.), s. 473-478. ISBN 978-1-55014-521-2.
[Names in Contact: Names in a Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural, Multi-Ethnic World. Toronto (CA), 17.08.2008-22.08.2008]
Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z90610518
Keywords : Czech toponyms * language contacts * Central Europe
Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics

The fact that on the territory of the present Czech Republic different nations and ethnic groups came to close contacts is also reflected in Czech toponymy where several layers of names of foreign origin can be distinguished. Besides the oldest toponyms (mostly hydronyms and oronyms) from the pre-Slavonic substrata (Morava, Odra, Labe, Jizera; Říp, Oškobrh) younger German names (adapted in various degree into Czech – e.g. Varnsdorf, Frýdlant, Liberec) occur often on the whole Czech territory. In the toponymy of the Eastern part of the Czech Republic (especially in Eastern Moravia in Carpathians) names of Romanian (or more precisely Balkan) origin can be found (Grúň), which have been introduced there with the so-called Wallachian colonisation. Czech toponymy has been considerably enriched with the geographical names borrowed from the Bible (Tábor, Oreb, Sion, Jordán) and with toponyms from remote regions (Temešvár, Amerika, Habeš, Port Artur, Korea) as well.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0182527