Tabu dotyczące nazw duszy i ciała w wyobrażeniach starożytnych ludów Italii

The article discusses Latin names of the body parts that could be included a taboo ban. This refers to the places such as head, heart, liver, or substances as blood, tears, sperm, which were considered to be the centres of the soul or the magic power. In the opinion of the linguist Franz Specht there were some Indo-European names of body parts that contained the u vowel. That phoneme was thought to be a sign identifying the anatomical names connected to the sacred sphere. The article discusses the results of the research verifying that view basing on the Old-Italic material. It turns out that, for the ancient Italic peoples, only some names of body parts were of magic significance, crucial from the point of view of oblational and divination practices.