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.
However, the most unique and fantastic Czech surnames are those created from verbs. In other words, they describe an action. Take, for instance the common surname Vyskočil, which literally means jumped out. It’s hard to say who jumped out of what, but Moldanová the onomatologist believes it originated when the first Vyskočil jumped out of a window during a brawl in the local hospoda. The stories behind surnames such as Dupal (Stamped his feet), Navrátil (He who returned), Stejskal (He who grumbled), Pospíšil (He who was in a hurry), or Stojespal (He who slept standing on his feet) are less clear.
Logically, when people received surnames because of something they did, they could also perfectly well receive surnames because of something they didn’t do, as, for instance, Nesnídal (He who didn’t eat breakfast) and Netušil (He who didn’t suspect anything).
The imaginativeness and keen humour of Czech surnames is simply unique. Nobody has expressed the magic of Czech surnames better and more precisely than Pavel Eisner, who knew Czech culture as thoroughly as its German and Jewish counterparts:
“The Czech nation’s history manifests its tragedy by forcing tragic situations and experiences on a people whom nature has equipped with a large, mental supply of tragedy. Therefore, they are far more than other nations susceptible to life’s bright sides, to smile and laughter, and to mockery and ridicule.”
Švejk, The Good Soldier
The Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy once said that a place in world literature only is available to those countries that can boast at least one work with such reputation that it bulldozes the way for others. Where Czech literature is concerned, there can be no discussion that Jaroslav Hašek’s four books about the Soldier Švejk represent such a bulldozer. Since their publication in the early 1920s, the Švejk books have been translated into more than 50 languages, and the slack-jawed and boozing anti-hero is still considered to be one of the Czechs’ largest contributions to world literature.
This, however, does not mean that the Czechs themselves regard Jaroslav Hašek as a brilliant writer and Švejk as a national treasure. Just like two other writers with roots in Bohemia and Moravia — Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera — Hašek and his Good Soldier also generate more controversy than praise. But unlike German-writing Kafka or now French-writing Kundera, the controversy is not because Hašek doesn’t fill the requirements to be called a proper Czech. The problem is, as the historian Jan P. Kučera points out, that he is linked more closely to the Czechs and Czech culture than most people find pleasant.
The objections against Hašek and his literary hero can be sorted roughly into two groups — those related to the author, and those linked to Švejk’s morality (or rather his astonishing lack of it).
Admittedly, Hašek’s personal biography would be a nightmare to any good burgher anxious about his country’s good image. During his 40-year life — coincidentally, he was born in 1883, the same year as Franz Kafka, and died only a year earlier — Hašek held a fixed job for only six months, when he worked as a clerk at Slavia Bank. For the rest of his turbulent life, he existed on the very fringe of society, earning a living as a freelance writer based in Prague’s hospodas.
Besides being a well-known drunkard, hooligan jailbird, anarchist and provocateur (typically, The Party for Moderate Progress within the Framework of the Law, which he established, struggled to promote nationwide alcoholism), Hašek was a bigamist — during the First World War he married a Russian woman without having been divorced from his Czech wife — while his real sexual orientation was very likely homosexual.