The Czechs in a Nutshell

Imagine you are at the airport. Suddenly an announcement sounds from the loudspeakers: Mr. Frog, Mr. Hippopotamus and Mrs. Pouched Marmot, please come to the information counter. Mr. Scratch-His-Head, Ms. Jump-On-The-Field and Mr. Don’t-Eat-Bread are waiting for you.

Very likely, you’ll assume somebody is practising a weird sense of humour. However, if this happens in the Czech Republic, it may not be a joke at all. It simply reflects the fact that probably no other nation on the planet can boast such an incredible number of peculiar surnames.

Most of the approximately 40,000 surnames currently used by Czechs originated in the period between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The habit of using a second name to express that you belong to a family was introduced by the nobility and then spread to the middle classes and free farmers, whose number rapidly increased when the Austrian Empire abolished serfdom in 1781. Five years later, Emperor Joseph II issued a decree ordering every single citizen in the empire to take a surname, which was to be hereditary.

For most Czechs, this didn’t represent any great problem, because they had already been given a surname when they were christened for several centuries (even at this point, women had the suffix -ová, equalling the genitive in English, attached to their father’s and later husband’s names). For the German-speaking Jews, however, it was not all that easy. For obvious reasons, they did not acquire informal surnames by baptism, and even though they were known to be among the Habsburg Empire’s most fervent supporters, only the eldest son in the family was allowed to marry and have a family of his own.

As a result of Emperor Joseph’s decree, the Jews were given surnames by the authorities, so it was small wonder that corruption flourished. The witty writer Pavel Eisner documented many cases where affluent people received impressive names such as Saphir, Diamant and Edelstein, while the poorest ones ended up as Regenschirmbestandteil, Nasenstern and even Notdurft.

The largest group of surnames used by Czechs today have their origin in different occupations and crafts. As nearly every other European nation, Czechs are also named Krejčí (Tailor), Truhlář (Carpenter), Kovář (Smith), Soustružník (Turner), Řezník (Butcher), Mlynář (Miller), Kramář (Shopkeeper), Malíř (Painter), Muzikant (Musician) and Bubeník (Drummer).

In the nineteenth century, however, the influx to Bohemia’s cities was so enormous that these names soon became ubiquitous. Therefore, to distinguish among individuals, people were named after the product they made or the tools they used in their crafts. Thus, tailors became Jehla (Needle) and Náprstek (Thimble), carpenters Kladivo (Hammer) and Sekyra (Axe), blacksmiths Palice (Sledgehammer), bakers Chlebíček (Sandwich) and Rohlík (Croissant), and innkeepers Vomáčka (Sauce), Kaše (Gruel), Voda (Water) and Pivko (Beer).

As the leading onomatologist Dobrava Moldanová points out, almost all of the objects we use in everyday life have produced Czech surnames. That goes for mints, buildings, shoes, vehicles, weapons, musical instruments, and even pieces of clothing, such as Kaftan (Caftan), Rubáš (Shroud) Kabát (coat) and Kalhoty (Trousers). Abstracts like Válka (War) Láska (Love) Svatba (Wedding) and Masopust (Carnival) are also highly represented, not to mention animal names.

These surnames are so frequent that it’s possible to compose an entire zoological classification table based on an average Czech telephone book. It’s simply unbelievable how many human hedgehogs (Ježek), bullocks (Volek), hares (Zajíc), frogs (Žába) and entire flocks of birds (Drozd, Holub, Vorel, Skřivan, Čermák) you can find in Bohemia and Moravia.

Even tropical animal names abound. Many Czech families carry surnames like hippopotamus (Hroch), ostrich (Pštros) and elephant (Slonek). This does not mean that hippos, for instance, once used to swim in the Vltava. Instead, many buildings in Prague’s older parts were named after these exotic creatures. When the Czechs started to leave the countryside and settled for work in the capital, they simply assumed surnames from the buildings where they lived.