Contact:
Veveří 97
602 00 Brno
E-mail: etim at ujc.cas.cz
About the Department of Etymology:
As the only academic institution in the Czech Republic dedicated to the systematic study of etymology, the Department’s work focuses on comparative historical research into the Slavic lexicon from ancient times after the disintegration of the Indo-European language community through the formation of specific Slavic languages to the present day. The Department places particular emphasis on the oldest recorded Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic, and Czech in all its developmental phases. The Department also addresses current issues of language contacts, typology and general linguistics.
Our current work:
The Department’s key task is compiling the
Etymological Dictionary of Old Church Slavonic Language, the only etymological dictionary of the oldest standard Slavonic language.
For details, click
here.
Since 1999, the Department has held an international etymological symposium every three years. The symposium organisers,
Dr. Ilona Janyšková and
Dr. Helena Karlíková, publish a collection of papers from each conference.
For details, click
here.
Studia etymologica Brunensia
The Department publishes its own series,
Studia etymologica Brunensia (editors: Ilona Janyšková and Helena Karlíková). It includes collections of papers from international etymological conferences organised by the Department as well as monographs on various topics by Department members (published by the Lidové noviny publishing house).
For specific issues, see
Publications.
The Department also compiles a more general series, Travaux linguistiques de Brno (editor: Bohumil Vykypěl with Vít Boček), published by the Lincom publishing house in Munich.
For details, click
here.
Since 2010, the Department has also been working on a series called Studies of key figures in Brno linguistics (editors: Petr Malčík and Jan Dvořák), which aims to make significant texts by linguists related to Brno publicly accessible (published by Host publishers).
For details, click
here.
Collections and materials:
The Department of Etymology has a well-equipped reference library. The Department continuously adds to and updates its book collection. A key source of new additions are exchanges of publications with a number of similarly focused Slavistic academic institutions in other countries, with which the Department has close ties. Thanks to these working relationships, the library contains a large quantity of etymological, Slavistic and Indo-Europeanist publications as well as a number of lexicons and encyclopaedias. The library owns the only copies of many of these books in the Czech republic.
Since the 1950s, i.e. since its establishment, the Department has been building an excerpt fund (based on the initiative of Václav Machek). It is primarily an alphabetical card index of Common Slavic lemmas that contains a comprehensive list of etymological explanations from magazines, professional publications and dictionaries relating to each lemma and significant lexical material from all Slavic languages. Two other card indexes are also continuously filled, a factual card index and a card index of foreign words, the core of which consists of excerpts from the estate of Slovak researcher J. M. Kořínek.
Materials you can download:
List of references from the Etymological Dictionary of Old Church Slavonic Language – complete and revised list of references cited in the EDOCSL (updated on 18 January, 2019).
Department publications in electronic form
Staff:
doc. Mgr. Bohumil Vykypěl, Ph.D. 
Head of the Department
e-mail: vykypel at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 512, +420 605 580 531, fax: +420 549 216 872
PhDr. Aleš Bičan, Ph.D.
e-mail: bican at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 514
doc. Mgr. Bc. Vít Boček, Ph.D.
e-mail: vitbocek at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 516
PhDr. Ilona Janyšková, CSc.
e-mail: ilona.janyskova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 518
PhDr. Helena Karlíková, CSc.
e-mail: helena.karlikova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 519
Mgr. Olga Navrátilová, Ph.D.
e-mail: o.navratilova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 513
Mgr. Lucie Štěrbová
e-mail: sterbova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 517
Mgr. Janka Villnow Komárková, Ph.D. (temporarily absent)
e-mail: jana.villnow at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 514
doc. Mgr. Taťána Vykypělová, Ph.D. 
e-mail: t.vykypelova@ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 512
Marie Chybová
knihovna
e-mail: chybova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 532 290 515
