In the paper eight names for ‘pupil of the eye’ that comes from local dialects or cants of Polish language, namely: pupilla, puppa, pupka, panienka, lalka, babka, człowieczek, mężyk, and their cognate names are lexically and semantically described. All such nouns refer to the concept of the human being that can be supposedly observed in the “pupil of the eye”. The wide belief in such a concept give the naming of this part of the eye in the Polish language. Such mechanism has been observed in all considered nouns. As discussed nouns have been confirmed in various, not always overlapping areas of Poland and periods of time, we refer to their historical and local dialects’ sources. As some among such nouns have local Polish, others – foreign background, we put special attention to their etymology, word-formative processes and the source language. The noun commonly used in the literature for ‘pupil of the eye’ derive from the verb źrzeć (see Piotrowska, Zawadzka in press) and points at the function of this part of the eye. The fact that in Polish local dialects and in Polish literature so distinct concepts for the source of the name of ‘pupil-of-the-eye’ occurred may indicate the contradiction between the local and foreign sources that affected dialects and literary language in different ways.
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