Abstract
The text provides an overview of terms for the visual-spatial communication system of deaf people which were used in scientific sources written in Czech, especially in pedagogical literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. The current term Czech Sign Language (český znakový jazyk), denoting the natural, full-fledged language of the Czech Deaf community, has been used only recently in Czech scientific circles.
The term sign speech (znaková řeč), which became dominant in the 1980s, still prevails in common usage. However, over the course of the two centuries, the nomenclature in this field was highly inconsistent, with up to 35 different terms for sign language, most of which have their roots in the second half of the 19th century (the first treatise on sign language in Czech was published in 1846).
The most frequent collocation until the 1980s was gesture speech (posuňková/posunková řeč), which, in accordance with the beliefs of that time, reflects a certain individuality, universality and external similarity of sign language to non-verbal communication