Slovenian dialect names for mythical wild women with backward feet

Abstract

This article presents dialect names for mythical wild women with backward feet (Slovenian krivopeta). Although the folklore heritage about these mythical beings is known only in certain parts of northwestern Slovenian linguistic territory (the Trenta Valley, the Breginj Combe, the Livek area, and Venetian Slovenia), archival sources, publications, and recent field transcriptions testify to a full twenty Slovenian designations; the majority of these differ only phonetically, and some of them also in their word formational basis.