GERMAN AND POLISH NAMES OF HIGHER SCHOOLS FROM A LINGUISTIC AND TRANSLATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES) The present paper is an attempt to describe the nomination usus (namegiving linguistic custom) regarding higher schools of the German-speaking area on the one hand, and of the Polish-speaking one on the other. The specific semantic categories of nominal components correspond to grammatical realisations, which are subject to certain structural constraints, as well as exhibit more and less typical forms. Informed by such observations – initiated by Jan Iluk’s overview paper [2000] and refined by an analysis of much broader material, encompassing Austrian and Swiss names as well – I tried to show the name-giving possibilities and tendencies in this field in both German and Polish, mainly with a view to a translation-related application of such contrastive analysis. The findings presented here, based on the material of a considerable number of higher school names in the examined area and combined with the presentation of about 100 German and some 45 Polish examples (provided with translations), should help both in evaluating already published equivalents, hardly ever official in the case of German, and proposing one’s own ones – also because of the non-existence of given equivalents in publications, be it only Internet-based ones.