Tracking ancient Slavic lexical dialectisms in the toponymy of Poland: *vertěja ‘hill, holm’ and cognates

A Polish field name attested in the 20^th–21^th centuries as Wrzyciej, Wrzycieja and (plural?) Wrzycieje (the village of Apolonka, Silesian Voivodeship, Southern Poland) seems to reflect the ancient Slavic lexical dialectism *vertěja ‘small hill; holm (?)’, conserved as appellative up to our days mainly in Old and North Russian as well as in few Belarusian and peripheric North-Western Ukrainian dialects. In the main bulk of the paper historical reflexes of this word (including variants) and those of the most closely related lexemes *vertь (*-i-stem) and *vertьje are presented and discussed. The latter, in their turn, may be reflected in the Polish place names Wrzec(z)ko bis (if < *Vert-ьsko) and (so?) Wrzecica (if < *Vertica). As the vowel y of Wrzyciej- might point to the retained length of the etymologically long radical syllable, some remarks are devoted to the prosodic reconstruction and subsequent evolution of possible proto-forms as well.