Department of the Slovak Language History, Onomastics and Etymology
Our mission
We focus on the research into the development and history of the Slovak language from a linguistic and comparative point of view against a broader cultural and historical background. At present, we are primarily concerned with the phonological development of the Slovak language, which indeed is a continuation of the historical lexicology and lexicography research, or the external history of the Slovak language, that had been carried out at our department in the past. We continuously make unpublished Slovak manuscript linguistic monuments available to the wider professional public and those interested in Older Slovak.
Apart from that, the department also conducts onomastic research, the aim of which is to analyse historical and contemporary anthroponymy (i.e. the use of proper names) and toponymy (i.e. the use of geographical names) and the lexicographical elaboration thereof. We deal with issues related to onomastic theory, methodology and terminology within an international context. The aforementioned is also associated with the creation of a digital database of Slovak terrain names and the lexicographic and language geography related processing thereof, the updating of Slovak onomastic terminology, and cooperation on a project of the Research Institute of Slovaks in Hungary in Békéscsaba, which focuses on the study of proper names, especially surnames, in Slovak language enclaves in Hungary.
As part of etymological research, we investigate into the origin, primary meaning and relatedness of words in the broader Slavic and (Central) European context. Following the publication of the synthesizing Stručný etymologický slovník slovenčiny [Concise Etymological Dictionary of Slovak] (2015; 2nd, revised ed. 2019), we have begun to create an etymological database of Slovak lexis with regard to its historical and dialectal form.
The department houses specialised reference libraries devoted to specialist literature in the fields of language history, onomastics and etymology, and photocopies of historical texts. We participate in the creation of the Historický korpus slovenčiny [Corpus of Historical Slovak]. In addition to the card catalogue of the Historical Dictionary of the Slovak Language, the card catalogue of Slovak terrain names and historical anthroponymy and toponymy, the department also holds card catalogues from the periods of Bernolák’s standard and Štúr’s standard Slovak.
Our researchers:
Iveta Valentová, Head of Department
Siniša Habijanec
Milan Harvalík
Ľubor Králik
Tatiana Laliková
Anna Ramšáková
Patrik Jakubek (internal PhD. student)
Katarína Rausová (internal PhD. student)
Researchers at the Department of the Slovak Language History, Onomastics and Etymology (sk)
Research activities of the department
Current projects carried out at the department