Abstrakt
Modern sports and their terminologies in European and other languages have been strongly influenced by English. The reason is that some of the most popular sports originating in Anglophone countries have been exported to other countries complete with established terminology.
There are several possibilities of how to transfer terminology into recipient languages: to borrow and adapt original English terms, to use vernacular terms (by employing existing or coining new expressions), or to do both. The paper assumes that the interaction between English and Czech in the development of a sports terminology creates fertile ground for the proliferation of terminological synonyms.
It was assumed that a typical development involves the adoption of an Anglicism which is subsequently either replaced or supplemented by a vernacular term or terms. The latter case thus results in terminological synonyms.
For these purposes one hundred essential terms were selected for three different Anglophone sports, association football, tennis and golf, and all their Czech equivalents were gathered using available sources. It was found, among other things, that the 300 English terms are matched by the total of 540 equivalents.
The results basically confirm the Anglicism to vernacular shift as a potent source of synonyms, though other intervening factors such as the period of time since the introduction of the sport, the general and social media popularity and accessibility of the sport for the general public play an important part.