Department of Onomastics

Contact:

Valentinská 1

116 46 Praha 1

E-mail: onomastika at ujc.cas.cz

About the Department of Onomastics:

The Department of Onomastics is the only institution dedicated to onomastics in the Czech Republic. It was founded in 1960 with the key task of collecting minor place names in Bohemia. With the help of more than 4,000 volunteer local helpers, between 1963 and 1980 over 400,000 minor place names used in Bohemia during the second half of the 20th century were collected. Since 1994 compilation of this material into a Dictionary of Minor Place Names in Bohemia has been underway. The names that have been entered to date are published electronically here. Aside from work on the Dictionary of Minor Place Names in Bohemia, the Department has also conducted research into personal names since its inception. The Department also addresses the theoretical aspects (linguistic and non-linguistic) of the origins of proper names and how they are used in communication in society and the development of onomastic research methodology focusing on the interdisciplinary context of such research and the relationships between the appellative and proprial spheres of language.

Our current work:

Dictionary of Minor Place Names in Bohemia
Minor place names, names of unsettled geographic features, mainly fields, meadows, woods, mountains, bodies of water and paths, comprise one group of geographic proper names. Minor place names in Bohemia were collected through an extensive set of activities that took place from 1963 to 1980. Almost half a million records of place names were collected. Following a long period of difficult preparatory work, which consisted mainly of building an alphabetical general catalogue of minor place names in Bohemia, subsequent development of a computer database of the names and definition of the dictionary concept, work on the first volume of the Dictionary of Minor Place Names in Bohemia was initiated at the beginning of the 21st century. The first volume was published in 2005; the work then accelerated significantly and each subsequent year saw the publication of another volume. After publication of the fifth volume, it was decided that further new entries in the Dictionary of Minor Place Names in Bohemia would be published electronically. You can find a list of keyword and new entries here.

Acta onomastica journal
The journal Acta onomastica is the only Czech peer-reviewed scientific periodical about proper names. It was founded in 1960 under the title Bulletin of the Topography Committee of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (later published as the Onomastics Bulletin). It has a broad network of Czech and foreign contributors, prints articles primarily in Czech, Slovak, Polish, Russian, German and English. The original articles, reviews and news published in the Bulletin concern all areas of research into proper names and their language and non-language aspects. In regard to the interdisciplinary nature of the journal, it contains articles by linguists as well as scientists from other fields. Since 2019, the journal has published two issues per year, in April and October.

Editor in chief: PhDr. Pavel Štěpán, Ph.D.

Executive editors: PhDr. Žaneta Dvořáková, Ph.D. and Mgr. Soňa Wojnarová

Verification of personal names
The Department of Onomastics elaborates expert linguistic opinions, i.e. verification of formats of first names and surnames in relation to legislation governing how such names must be entered in personal documents. You can find more information here.

Collaboration with universities
The Department of Onomastics leads workshops about onomastics at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, instructs doctoral students and supervises master’s and bachelor’s theses and seminar papers.

Collections and materials:

The following collections and materials are stored in the Department of Onomastics:

1. Collections of minor place names:

– original lists of minor place names from 1963–1980 for more than 86% of Czech municipalities and settlements in Bohemia;

– original lists of minor place names from 1974–1980 for 1,561 municipalities and settlements in border areas of Bohemia, which were predominantly inhabited by German-speaking inhabitants until 1945;

– approx. 430,000 alphabetically listed records of minor place names obtained from excerpts from lists compiled for Bohemia in 1963–1980, which are available in electronic form as well;

– almost 180,000 alphabetically listed records of minor place names from Bohemia obtained from excerpts from printed sources and literature;

– roughly 245,000 records of minor place names obtained from excerpts from the Teresian land register and listed alphabetically by manor name;

– approx. 22,000 records of minor place names from Bohemia obtained from excerpts from manuscript collections stored in archives and museums in Bohemia;

– almost 20,000 alphabetically listed records of minor place names from maps of the 19th century Stable Cadastre for municipalities in the former Central Bohemia region;

– some of the original lists of minor place names from individual municipalities in the border areas, which were predominantly inhabited by German-speaking inhabitants until 1945, and an alphabetical handwritten card index of minor place names from these lists. This material was obtained from a project organised by Prof. E. Schwarz in the interwar period and is on long-term loan from the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

2. Extensive map collection:

– handwritten, alphabetically arranged collection of Dr. J. Svoboda, which was the basis for his book Old Czech Personal Names (Prague 1964, 317 pg.) and by which he compiled the Dictionary of Old Czech Personal Names;

– handwritten, alphabetically arranged collection of personal names acquired by V. Sajtl from excerpts from registry offices in the Central Bohemia region.

3. Extensive map collection.

4. Alphabetical register of toponyms recorded in the onomastics journal (the title of the journal changed as follows: 1960–1982 Bulletin of the Topography Committee of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1983–1992 Onomastics Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1993–1994 Onomastics Bulletin, 1995 – present Acta onomastica).

The Department also has an extensive onomastics library that includes a catalogue of authors and a factual catalogue. The collections are being gradually digitalised and some will be made accessible on the Internet.

Staff:

PhDr. Pavel Štěpán, Ph.D.
Head of the Department

e-mail: stepan at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 225 391 467

PhDr. Žaneta Dvořáková, Ph.D.

e-mail: z.dvorakova at ujc.cas.cz

tel.: +420 225 391 467

Mgr. et Mgr. Martina Lobotková, Ph.D. (temporarily absent)

e-mail: m.lobotkova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 225 391 466

PhDr. Martina Ptáčníková, Ph.D.

e-mail: ptacnikova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 225 391 467

Mgr. Martina Zirhutová
e-mail: zirhutova at ujc.cas.cz
tel.: +420 225 391 467