euphony; hydronyms; Ostravice; Morava; quantitative linguistics; socioonomastics

The contribution researches sound qualities of water-names from two different perspectives. The corpora employed are the names from the Ostravice and Morava river basins; in case of both, only flowing-water names are analyzed. First, we quantify the phenomena using the euphony count, which was devised for quantitative investigations in poetry. The calculation is based upon the probability of a co-occurrence of a consonant in a line; in our research, we have exchanged the line for the very hydronym. The results are exact euphony values, which enable us to order the names. In the following step, the top-scoring hydronyms form the backbone of a sociological survey among secondary-school pupils and university students. The respondents will be asked to rank the names according to their decreasing euphoniousness; the results will be contrasted with the figures from the previous part of the research. The goal of the contribution is to compare the quantitative outcomes with the opinions of the respondents, and try to comment upon the validity of the former; secondarily, it will present the usage of the euphony formula to a broader onomastic audience.