Predoslje a Prelosno (po 45 letech)

France Bezlaj first published his account of the Slovene toponyms Predoslje and Prelosno in the journal Zpravodaj Místopisné komise ČSAV in 1967. Based on historical records (Prerassell and other similar forms) as well as geographic characteristics of the locations in question, he claimed that the term *predoselj from folk geographic terminology, denoting a natural bridge over a ravine or perhaps even a ravine as such, contains the lexeme *prěrǫslo, identified as an obsolete appellative form *rǫslo sharing its root with the Russian ruslo ‘riverbed, river or stream’. In this paper, however, we propose to explain the names Predoslje and Prelosno as originating from the geographic appellative *prěraslь, derived from the verb prerasti ‘to overgrow’. Parallels to the obsolete appelative *prerasel can be found in Polish (Przerośl), Western-Ukrainian (Перерiсль), and Serbian (Велика, Maлa Прераст) toponymy.