Historical Development of Concepts and Their Designations: The Latvian Terms Grāmatvedība (‘Accounting’) and Grāmatvedis (‘Accountant’)

Identification of the heritage of Latvian terminology and past processes. Detailed research is important for documenting the history of language development and standardization and successful terminological work today. This article examines the relationship between two important accounting concepts and concept designations in Latvian – grāmatvedība (‘accounting’) and grāmatvedis (‘accountant’), which are characterized by attempts to Latvianize and the obvious influence of contact languages. The influence of the Latvian contact languages, German and Russian, also plays a role in the variation and change of terms. The study uses about 75 excerpts (microtexts) from 18th- to 20th-century Latvian written sources (dictionaries, books, and periodicals) collected by Juris Baldunčiks (1950–2022). The onomasiological approach was used to analyze the material. The material under study shows that by 1918, a considerable range of economic and financial terms had already been established in the Latvian language. Still, the most significant changes occurred in the 1870s.