The article is devoted to more comprehensive use of medieval onymic resources in research on the history of the Polish language. These materials were used in research on the phonetic development of the Polish language in its earliest period. To date, they have rarely appeared in lexical studies. The body of the oldest appellatives, reconstructed on the basis of proper names, would be a kind of lexicon (supplement) enriching and verifying old Polish lexical material, certifi ed in historical Polish dictionaries (also in etymological dictionaries). In this way, the expectations formulated over 100 years ago by eminent Polish linguists may be fulfi lled. The complementary use of such a huge wealth of material opens up further research perspectives towards etymological, dialectological, lexical and morphological research.

“How come you’re not shipping them??? They’re canon”: a look at the language of Italian fandom – The aim of this article is to examine a relatively recent phenomenon in the language of fandom, i.e. various communities of fans that form around a cultural event or artifact, such as a book, a TV show, a movie, etc. This research is located within fan studies, however, it mainly investigates the linguistic aspects of being a fan in Italian. The distinctive feature of the language of fandom as a specific variety, associated with a particular topic and activity and mediated by Internet communication tools, is a specialist lexicon, understandable only to community members. The article concentrates on loanwords from English which in the case of Italian primarily comprise the vocabulary of fandom.

This article deals with a group of Polish surnames motivated by lexis from the field of salt mining. The analysed surnames are excerpted from “Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych”, edited by Kazimierz Rymut, as well as from other onomastic compilations. These anthroponyms vary in terms of their origins and linguistic construction. We can distinguish from among these anthroponyms: 1) surnames motivated by impersonal nouns: solanka, solnica, sól, tołpa, żupa; 2) surnames motivated by adjectives: słony, solny; 3) surnames motivated by personal nouns: prasoł, solarz, solnik, warzyc, warzysz, żupnik. The description of particular ‛salt’ surnames, apart from their frequency, includes their geographical distribution, which only in some cases is connected with the location of old salt mines, found mainly in the Lesser Poland (Małopolska).

The article attempts to differentiate, on the basis of selected words recorded in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, whether we are dealing with language loans or old references. The analysis takes into account e.g. ethymological, morphological and geographical criteria. The study focuses on the following words: cot ‘an even number’, czapigi, czepigi ‘plough handle’, had ‘an abominable animal’ and hydzić się ‘loathe’, ‘abhor’, ‘denigrate’, kosiec ‘scyther’, liszka ‘an odd number’, liszny/liszni ‘superfluous’, ‘supernumerary’, przewiąsło ‘a straw belt to tie sheaths siewiec ‘sower’, śloza ‘tear’, żeniec ‘harvester’, żenich, żeniuch ‘bridegroom’, ‘fiancé’, żnieja ‘female harvester’. Recognition as borrowings may be based on those word forms where phonetic elements characteristic of other languages, unknown in Polish, occur. Analysis of certain words has revealed the occurrence of Proto-Slavic and all- -Slavic words, preserved in the Polish language as relics, in peripheral areas. In some cases, it is difficult to make clear-cut decisions, because, for example, the stem of the word is a continuation of the Proto-Slavic forms, to be found in the Polish language, while the derivatives are borrowings.

To study language contact in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, we employ extensive subdialect records from atlases, dictionaries, monographic studies, and various file collections. Significantly, however, all of the above lack historical information about the words they contain. Such data can be obtained by using local names and by taking into account all pan-Slavic references. Such comparisons justify the conclusion that historically many of the presented names extended far further westward than is indicated by typically used materials, mainly from the 20th century, though much less frequently from the second half of the 19th century. This sheds new light on the problem of whether the names in question are loan words, naturally older than had previously been thought, or rather relics of former regional convergence, covering the broad Polish-Russian language borderland, and constituting the Mazovian-Russian community.

This article is a contribution to the study of the history of the lexis of the Proto- -Slavic language. The etymological analysis of anatomical lexis presented in this article allows us to establish several chronological layers of the lexis: lexemes inherited from the Indo-European proto-language, lexemes from the Baltic and Slavic language communities, lexemes created from Indo-European bases, and lexemes created from Proto-Slavic bases, which are late innovations of the Proto- -Slavic language. Each stage of the history of the Proto-Slavic lexis is documented with appropriate material. In this way this study advances research on the development of Proto-Slavic historical lexicology.