Lithuanian and Latvian synonymous and variant names of plants in "Lietuviszkai–latviszkai–lenkiszkai–rusiszkas žodynas" by Mykolas Miežinis

"Lietuviszkai-latviszkai-lenkiszkai-rusiszkas žodynas" (1894) by Mykolas Miežinis is one of the very few printed dictionaries from Lithuania proper in the 19th century. It contains a huge number of words from folk language which subsequently fell out of usage. Among other such words this dictionary presents names of plants in Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish and Russian. The article deals with Lithuanian and Latvian terms which have synonyms and variants. The attempt to establish what plants were named by words found in Miežinis’ dictionary was successful. There are very few names of plants in Latin in this dictionary; therefore it was not always easy to identify the plant under a particular name. In some cases Latvian names were helpful. In some cases Miežinis presented names of different plants as synonyms probably because these plants were not distinguished in the folk language and were named by similar names. There also are opposite cases when the same name was used for different plants. The names found were used in both Žemaitija (Lowland) and Aukštaitija (Highland) dialects. This suggests the likelihood that Miežinis collected these names working in different parts of Lithuania and Latvia. Names of plants from Miežinis’ dictionary can also be found in works of Phillip Ruhig (Pilypas Ruigys), Ferdinand Nesselmann, Friedrich Kurschat (Frydrichas Kuršaitis) and Antanas Juška. The majority of names of plants presented in the dictionary are borrowings: Lithuanian names were borrowed from German, Latvian, Latin, Slavic or Turkic languages and Latvian names – from Germanic or Slavic languages. There were 20 lines of synonyms found for both Lithuanian and Latvian. Miežinis used two or three synonymous names for a plant which were used in the folk language and in written sources. Among 19 lines of variants of Lithuanian names phonetic and orthographic variants prevail. There was only one case of morphological variants of Latvian names noted