Etymology and ethnolinguistics: Different methodologies with a common goal

Abstract

The article focuses on the relationship between etymology and ethnolinguistics. The two fields come to foreground in analyses of dialectal plant names, especially of their origin. It is concluded that both fields should function in symbiosis and use each other’s achievements. Therefore, etymologists make ample use of ethnolinguistic findings in their semantic analyses. Those findings help determine the historical semantic motivation of the words being studied. Ethnolinguists, in turn, on the basis of etymological findings, arrive at the original senses of words, helpful in analysing their subjective meanings.