Obraz dawnego świata odbity w nazwach miejscowych

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to show the past reality reflected in toponymic names coming from the districts of Bielsko-Biała and Olkusz. Interpretation of the names, their etymology and word formation involving well known rules of giving names and functioning of them leads to approaching the world of our ancestors, its realities, the hierarchy of values that people of those days lived according to etc. Moreover, in the paper the author tries to point to similarities and differences between the two regions which are results not only of historical and geographical realities but also of the ways that people of those days, creators of these names, perceived their reality. Also, linguistic forms and phenomena both extinct since a long time and nowhere except in these names fixed are shown.