EN
This article discusses the problems of lexical change in the field of animal names. The analysis covers a short period – the turn of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, recognizing it as a crucial point for the discussed vocabulary of the area. It was in that time that texts concerning zoology began to appear in the Polish language, which directly influenced the formation of a scientific (as opposed to the linguistic, naive) image of animals. The study indicates the specificity and diversity of the names in relation to their modern-day equivalents, and attempts to determine the impact of a new way of thinking on animalistic vocabulary. A number of consequences of the introduction of the new paradigm describing fauna are enumerated, acknowledging that at the linguistic level they concerned mainly the appearance of Polish scientific zoological terminology.