Václav Blažek Masaryk University, Brno blazek@phil.muni.cz | ORCID 0000-0002-6797-7188 Flora in Beja Lexicon Abstract In the present contribution the Beja botanical terminology is analyzed from the point of view of semantic motivation. The study is limited only to the unborrowed part of the botanical lexicon (with some exceptions), together 76 terms. First 51 terms are etymologized with help of external comparisons with probable cognates in other Cushitic or Afroasiatic languages. The last 25 terms are understandable from the point of view of internal etymology and their seman- tic motivation is more transparent than in the preceding cases. Keywords botanical terminology, semantic motivation, etymology, borrowing, Beja, Cushitic, Afroasiatic There are only two special studies devoted explicitly to the Beja botanic terminology. The author of the frst collection of the Beja phytonyms was the German botanist and palaeontologist Georg August Schweinfurth (Riga 1836 – Berlin 1925). Its title is ‘Pfanzennamen der Bega-Sprache zwischen Suekin und Berber’, published in Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde 4: 334–339, 1869. It contains 146 phytonyms in a very imperfect transcrip- tion with corresponding Latin botanic counterparts. The second scholar op- erating in this feld was the Swiss Egyptologist, Assyriologist, Arabist and generally orientalist, Johann Jakob Hess (Fribourg 1866 – Zürich 1949). He is the author of the article ‘Geographische Benennungen und Pfanzenna- men in der nördlichen Bischari-Sprache’, Zeitschrift für Kolonial-Sprachen 9: 209–225, 1919. Hess had collected 144 phytonyms, all carefully recorded, with sophisticated grammatical and etymological comments. He was able to identify the Arabic counterparts, frequently from dialects of Sudan, Yem- en or Central Arabia, which could be the direct sources of some Beja plant names. Occasionally he added the Ethio-Semitic or Egyptian parallels. All his comparanda may be seriously accepted till the present time. The aim of the present study is to classify the etymologizable part of the botanic lexicon of Beja from the point of view of semantic motivation. With exception of several cases, the identifed loanwords are excluded. FOLIA ORIENTALIA VOL. 58 (2021) DOI 10.24425/for.2021.142211