The paper presents a survey of the study of animal names in West Slavic languages. Within the scope of the survey were the onomastic works from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The author of the paper has distinguished four main areas of animal names study: the study of animal names in rural areas, of animal names in literature, of animal names in zoos, and of animal names in cities; and has analyzed all of them. The survey revealed that there is a significant disproportion in the number of works published on animal names in the three countries. The topic has been investigated most thoroughly by Polish linguists, and a number of valuable papers has been published in Slovakia. The most popular area of the study has been the study of animal names in rural areas.
The moon is one of the basic motives in the output of K.I. Gałczyński and a designation animated by him the most frequently – in the poet’s lyrics appeared 97 animisations of the moon. Using them the moon is created as a human being: it has a human appearance, it behaviours like a man, it has a human psyche and human interests, it plays various social roles. The type of animation used the most frequently is the anthropomorphisation and the considerably rarer are anthropopateis, animisations and animalisations. The density degree of the moon animisations in the poems is low (41,9), same as the degree of their frequency (45,3). The majority of samples of the stylistic figure plays the poetic function or dynamism to the lyric picture, the other are used for the expressive and humoristic purpose.