Taszycki, Witold

Born June 20, 1898, in Zagórzany. Polish linguist and Slavicist. Academician of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1939).

Taszycki graduated from the Jagiellonian University in 1922. He was a professor at the University of Vilnius in 1928 and at the University of L’vov from 1929 to 1941 and in 1944 and 1945. Since 1946 he has been a professor at the Jagiellonian University.

Taszycki’s chief works have dealt with Slavic studies, history, historical dialectology, lexicology, onomastics, and Polish orthography. He advanced a theory of the Little Polish origin of the Polish literary language. He studied Polish medieval culture and published the texts of early works written in Polish. Taszycki also developed an original toponymic classification.

Since 1955, Taszycki has been editor of the journal Onomástica (Onomastics). He is also the editor of the Dictionary of Polish Dialects (since 1964) and of the Dictionary of Old Polish Proper Names (vols. 1–3,1965–73).