Czech Toponyms of Foreign Origin as Witnesses of Multicultural Contacts in Central Europe

Abstract

The fact that on the territory of the present Czech Republic different nations and ethnic groups came into close contact is also reflected in Czech toponymy where several layers of names of foreign origin can be distinguished. Besides the oldest toponyms (mostly hydronyms and oronyms) from the pre-Slavonic substrata ('Morava', 'Odra', 'Labe', 'Jizera'; 'Říp', 'Oškobrh') younger German names (adapted in various degree into Czech – e.g., 'Varnsdorf', 'Frýdlant', 'Liberec') occur often on the whole Czech territory. In the toponymy of the Eastern part of the Czech Republic (especially in Eastern Moravia in the Carpathians) names of Romanian (or more precisely Balkan) origin can be found ('Grúň'), which have been introduced there with the so-called Wallachian colonization. Czech toponymy has been considerably enriched with the geographical names borrowed from the Bible ('Tábor', 'Oreb', 'Sion', 'Jordán') and with toponyms from remote regions ('Temešvár', 'Amerika', 'Habeš', 'Port Artur', 'Korea') as well.