Czech name
Czech names are composed of a given name and a family name. Czechs typically get one given name – additional names may be chosen by themselves upon baptism but they generally use one. With marriage, the bride typically adopts the bridegroom's surname.
Given names
In the Czech Republic, names are simply known as jména or, if the context requires it, křestní jména. The singular form is jméno. A native Czech given name may have Christian roots or traditional Slavic pre-Christian origin.It used to be a legal obligation for parents to choose their child's name from a list that was pre-approved by the government. Special permission was necessary for other names with exceptions for minorities and foreigners. Since the Velvet revolution in 1989, parents have had the right to give their child any name they wish, provided it is used somewhere in the world and is not insulting or demeaning. However, in recent years the common practice has been that most birth-record offices look for the name in the book Jak se bude vaše dítě jmenovat?, which is a semi-official list of "allowed" names. If the name is not found there, authorities are unwilling to register the child's name without a professional opinion from the Czech Language Institute.
Popularity
The most popular boys' names between 1999 and 2007 were Jan, Jakub, Tomáš and Martin. Among the most popular girls' names were Tereza, Kateřina, Eliška, Natálie and Adéla. In 2016, Jakub, Jan, Tomáš, Filip and Eliška, Tereza, Anna, Adéla were the most popular names.Grammar
Names, like all nouns in Czech language, are declined depending on their grammatical case. For example, one would say Pavel kouše sendvič, but Pes kouše Pavla and Pes ukousl Pavlovi prst ; "Pavel's finger". Unlike the closely related Slovak language, Czech has a vocative case used when calling or addressing someone. For instance, one would say, Pavle, pozor pes!.Surnames
While Czechs share relatively few given names—roughly 260 names have a frequency above 500 in the Czech Republic—there are tens of thousands of Czech surnames. These are similar in origin to English ones and may reflect:- a personal characteristic of someone's ancestor
- occupation
- the first name of a relative
- animals
- * especially birds are very common
- plants
- * especially fruits and vegetables
- food
- places of origin
- * also in a form of adjectives
- actions, usually in past simple had to", Pospíšil – " hurried up", Zdražil – " raised the price", Hrabal – "
- things
German surnames are also quite common in the Czech Republic; the country was part of the Austrian Empire before 1918 and had a large German population until World War II. Some of them got phonetically normalized and transcribed to Czech: Müller as well as Miler; Stein as well as Štajn, Schmied as well as Šmíd, Fritsch, Schlessinger, etc. Some of them retain their original German surnames e. g. : Gottwald, Feiersinger, Dienstbier, Berger, Koller, Klaus, Franz, Forman, Ebermann, Lendl, Ulihrach, Gebauer, Kaberle, Vogelstanz, Geier, etc. Other ethnic minorities that have been living in Czechia for centuries have retained their original or transcribed names - Croatian, Polish, French, Romanian, etc.
Many of Czech surnames occur in a diminutive form which was used to distinguish father and son, as a patronymic, or a taller and shorter persons. Almost any surname can have its diminutive version. Examples include Petr → Peterka or Petřík → Petříček, Václav → Václavek or Václavík or Vašek → Vašinka, Sedlák → Sedláček, Polák → Poláček, Novák → Nováček, Zajíc → Zajíček, Němec → Němeček, Kalous → Kalousek, Havel → Havlík → Havlíček, Štěpán → Štěpánek → Štěpnička, Kovář → Kovařík → Kovaříček, Holub → Holoubek, Kocour → Kocourek, Cibula → Cibulka, Petržela → Petrželka, Chalupa → Chaloupka, Čáp → Čapek, Beran → Beránek, Šmíd → Šmídek, Šnajdr → Šnejdárek, Doležal → Doležálek.
The most common Czech surnames are Novák, Svoboda, Novotný, Dvořák and Černý.
Female surnames
As in English-speaking countries, Czech women traditionally receive their father's surname at birth and take their husband's name when they marry. However, the names are not exactly the same; the endings differ to fit into the Czech language's systems of gender adjectives. For example, the tennis players Cyril Suk and Helena Suková are brother and sister; Suková is the feminine form of Suk. In fact, Czech female surnames are almost always feminine adjectives. There are several ways of forming them, depending on their male counterpart:- If the male surname is a masculine adjective, the female surname is simply the feminine equivalent. Thus, a girl whose father's surname is Novotný would have the surname Novotná .
- If the male surname is a noun, the female surname takes the suffix -ová, making it a feminine adjective:
- *Novák becomes Nováková
- *Horáče'k becomes Horáčková
- *Svoboda becomes Svobodová
- *Navrátil becomes Navrátilová', i.e. not Navrátila
The woman's surname is also not declined if it is of foreign origin and adding the suffix -ová would be awkward or unfeasible: Olga Walló, Blanka Matragi.
Czechs tend to add a feminine suffix to the surnames of Czech as well as foreign women surnames. Thus, e.g. Michelle Obama is referred to as Michelle Obamová in the Czech press. Science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin appears in Czech translations as Ursula Le Guinová. This phenomenon is not universal, however. In recent years, there has been lively discussion whether or not to change foreign female surnames in public use. Supporters of abandoning this habit claim that adding a Czech female suffix to a foreign surname means deliberately changing a woman's name and is therefore both misleading and inconsiderate, whereas traditionalists point out that only by adding the suffix can the name be used as a flexible feminine adjective within a naturally sounding Czech sentence. Although the discussion continues, the majority of newspapers and other media use the "adopted" versions.
Until 2004, every woman who married in the Czech Republic and wanted to change her name had to adopt a feminine surname, unless her husband was a foreigner whose name ended in a vowel or she was a registered member of a Czech minority group. A law passed in 2004 allows all foreign women, and Czech women who marry foreign men, to adopt their husband's exact surname.
An amendment proposed to allow women to use male family name versions was approved by the Senate of the Czech Republic in July 2021.
As in English-speaking countries, some Czech women decide to keep their maiden name after marriage or adopt a double surname. A couple can also agree to both adopt the woman's surname, with the husband using the masculine form.
Surnames in the plural
Surnames that are nouns in the masculine singular:- Novákovi - the Nováks
- rodina Novákova - the Novák family
- bratři Novákovi - the brothers Novák
- sestry Novákovy - the sisters Novák
Surnames that are adjectives in the masculine singular:
- Novotní - the Novotnýs
- rodina Novotných - the Novotný family
- bratři Novotní - the brothers Novotný
- sestry Novotné - the sisters Novotný