Foreign Influences in Polish Dialectal Plant Names

Summary

Introduction

An analysis of the vast quantity of lexical material constituting Polish dialectal plant names indicates that many of them are not actually of folk provenance. A large number of native, even homely sounding Polish and Slavic dialectal plant names that would seem to be authentically dialectal in form, that is, were created on a dialectal basis, are in fact of more ancient origin, and in some cases they are even foreign names with often complicated roots. It is significant that Polish and Slavic dialectologists have not paid much attention to this question. This is because for the most part they have not focused on the origin of names, even if a few observers have noted that some Polish dialectal plant names are not recent creations and are in actual fact recorded in old herbaria. In the majority of cases, however, these names were considered to be the products of dialect users. Nevertheless, they have an extremely interesting history, not only because they were inherited but also in view of the fact that many are calques or loanwords. These calqued terms, sometimes dating to the Middle Ages, have continued to survive as dialectal names in individual Slavic languages.

The purpose of this paper is to present Polish dialectal plant names of foreign origin. As is well known, the dialectal names of plants come from several sources: some are inherited names, some are terms taken from standard language, some are authentic dialectal names (originating in Polish dialects), and some are new calques and new loanwords. The above-mentioned inherited names can be divided into native names, old calques and old loanwords. The sources of Polish dialectal plant names are presented in Figure 1 below (after Waniakowa 2012: 187, see also Waniakowa 2018: 116).

In this paper I have focused on dialectal names of foreign origin, that is new and old loanwords as well as new and old calques. It should be emphasized at the outset that a number of standard Polish plant names that are also present in dialects are likewise of foreign origin. They include both loanwords and calques. In this way, standard Polish names that appear in dialects constitute another source of foreign influence.