Am I Czech or Bohemian ? Or both?? (part I) / Jsem Cech nebo Bohem ? Nebo objoji?? (1. cast)

Help, I have a question… My grandmother was born in Strakonice, Bohemia in 1884. I am trying to learn more about that part of my heritage.

I have learned that the name Bohemia came from the Boii tribe, (a group of Celts), which in 300 BC lived in the western area of present day Czech.

What is the origin for the name Czech?
How/why did the area/people known as Bohemia/Bohemian change to Czech?

Thanks for any help with this…

I always considered Bohemian to be a geographic designation and Czech to be an ethnicity and language. I wish that English speakers would adopt the word Czechia for the Czech Republic. It sounds so much more permanent. We don’t call Germany the German Federal Republic, or Slovakia the Slovak Republic.

You’re confusing (and should revise your article to replace!) “Silesia”, with “Sudetenland”!

Silesia (Schlesien in German) was the southern (southeast pointing) “finger” of Eastern Germany which formerly stretched down along the northern border of Czechoslovakia, but in the territory that is now southwestern Poland!

Sudeten-Germans were those Germans living in (throughout!) Bohemia and Moravia, but primarily along Bohemia’s (and Moravia’s) outside edges, (borders with what was then Germany (Silesia, Saxony, Franken, and Bavaria), and Austria — i.e., the contiguous German-speaking areas of settlement.

(The rest of this may be TMI for all but the more dedicated history buffs, but here goes:)

Some of these Sudeten-Germans were in fact Czechs who’d been germanicized, but some of them, even though they may have had Slavic surnames, were of Germanic stock who’d received their surnames from place names which were of Slavic origin. (By the time white settlers arrived in North America, most of them already had last names; but the original Indian inhabitants are still reflected in many of the geographic place names still to be found in the United States, (viz., Mississsippi; Dakota; Minnesota; Delaware; Alabama; Tuscaloosa; Miami; Manhattan; Malibu; Jamacha; etc.)

Although the Germanic peoples originally inhabited present-day Poland before the Slavs got there, during the period of the Völkerwanderung (“the migration of the peoples”, which included the invasion of the British Isles by the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes (the Anglo-Saxons!), the Germanic tribes moved further west (all the way to Northern Africa (the Vandals are the origin of the name “Andalusia” for the Iberian Peninsula!), temporarily vacating the eastern reaches (present-day Poland; most of the area of what was communist East Germany); and then, in the ninth century, began the centuries-long process known as the “Drang nach Osten” (“Push to the East”), in which the Germans began to re-settle and/or reconquer the lands east of the Saale and Elbe rivers.

These German settlers and colonists mostly retained the already existing Slavic place names (-ice is the Slavic genitive ending, indicating possession; modern German place names ending in -itz: Lankwitz; Trittelwitz etc. eflect this; the ending -ov is also typically Slavic: German place names such as Treptow; Pankow reflect this.

The Slavic populations were in some cases displaced, (massacred; driven out), in some cases assimilated (intermariage) but also frequently existed side-by-side with German populations (separate Slavic villages and German villages for centuries to come — indeed, East Germany still has a remnant Slavic population, the Sorbs, (who even survived Hitler!), and who still speak the Sorbian language! The majority were ultimately completely assimilated, though some of them retained Salvic surnames. But at the time of the German Eastern colonization, neither the Slavs nor the German peasants generally had any last names, so when the time came in the later Middle Ages, or early modern period to be assigned a last name (for tax or property records etc.), many of those Germans (or already germanicized people of partially Slavic origins) who didn’t get a last name based on: – their appearance (for example, Roth, Schwarz, Weiss, Braun, Gross, Klein, (Kline) Lang, Kurtz — meaning respectively, red, black, white, brown, big, little, long, and short!); – their occupation (for example, Schmidt, Schneider, Schultz, Bauer, – viz., smith, tailor, constable, farmer); – or a patronymic (especially anything ending in -sen or -son, meaning “son of”), — then they were frequently given a last name based on their place of origin or residence — and since many of them lived in places which still retained their Slavic place names, these were the names they were given, even if they themselves were possibly of Germanic, not Slavic origin. — But as said, after centuries of intermarriage and cultural assimilation of the working and peasant classes into the dominant (majority) German culture, exact original ethnic origins were by that point frequently impossible to still untangle with any certainty. Those who still spoke Slavic, on the other hand, were most likely of Slavic origin — or rather, of possibly mixed Slavic and similarly assimilated, earlier Celtic origins!

“Böhmen” was the German name for the Czech lands; Mähren for Moravia; Czech was the Slavic self-designation. Bohemia was one of the kingdoms of the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”, under Austrian (Habsburg) control, until the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up after World War I. (“Good King Wenceslas” is perhaps the most famous Bohemian, at least in the English-speaking world, due his supposed good deeds having been immortalized in the Christmas carol which bears his name…)

Ever since the days of Jan Hus (in the 15th century), there had been a cultural clash, between the Czechs and Germans, and a striving for Czech cultural and linguistic autonomy – ascendance – independence. This peaked in the 19th century era of nationalism and romanticism (Dvorak; Smetana, etc.), and was finally realized, as said, after World War I and the founding of the independent nation of Czechoslovakia.

But there was a significant German minority – circa 3 million – Sudeten-Germans, who were the majority population along the borders, and unfortunately, once the shoe was on the other foot, the new Czech political rulers almost immediately began to use it to then try to similarly? Culturally and politically repress the Germans — to systematically persecute? Definitely to discriminate against them!, and to seek politically disenfranchise them, viz., through a deliberate program of encouraging and subsidizing the settlement and purchase or takeover of German businesses by ethnic Czechs in those areas of overwhelming German settlement; and by calling up all of the ethnically German recruits and reservists for army service or exercises during elections, so that they wouldn’t be able to vote, etc. etc. So the Czechs themselves very definitely gave Hitler a concrete pretext, and valid argument for annexing the Sudetenland in 1938, in order to defend his ethnic kinsmen – probably much more justified than any of Putin’s current claims of a need to defend the rights of ethnic Russians in the Eastern Ukraine!

My grandparents were born and immigrated from Bohemia long before there was a Czechoslovakia. I am a bohemie.

You can read more about the history of German presence in what became known as Sudetenland and about their ultimate expulsion after WWII in 1945 here: http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm

Uh, my 12th grandmother was Alena z Berka. She married Bernard Ludwig Tobar (aka Tober). Her brother was Archbishop Zybnek z Berka, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Her ancestors were dukes of Bohemia. Does that make me a Bohemian?

What the he’ll am I? My grand mother always talked about the old country her parents were from Czechoslovakia but she always said she was bohemian. Her parents came to America before she was born, I would say they came here early to mid teens the 20th century. Her family name is hearnik. I have been looking at surnames 4 the better part of two hours and I have not found the name hearnik. My grandmother and my great uncle are the only people I have ever known or heard of that had that name. Anybody have any ideas on that?

First.. Thank You for sharing your knowledge & providing other’s to share their’s also to the history of Bohemians. I am American born & raised with no ties to any family. I have no cultural gift’s passed down, so all I know is American. I just had my mother, of German, Bohemian decent who recently passed & I have distant relative’s who I have never met. I have always wanted to know what Bohemian meant as to my history.

I have tried to look up information on the Bohemia ethnicity/culture only to being left with headaches & frustration. A little angry that Bohemian is known more as a fashion statement then an actual ethnicity. People who are not Bohemian by blood… are calling themselves Bohemian as to a way of their lifestyle choices.

As I have read here, Bohemians were assimilated, more then once throughout history so it still seem’s quite confusing & I believe I may never have an answer to where my ancestor’s really come from, but this Blog is a start.

I was excited to read here my mother’s last name, Smetana. I plan to look more into that now & then maybe I’ll have some answer’s.

Again, Thank you, & everyone that contribute’s information here! I now at least have a better understanding.

My great grandmother was born on Plzen. She said she spoke Bohemian. I’ve always wondered if she was Czech or Slovak. It is my dream to visit her homeland before I die.

To Jeri and Tanja:

Plzen is large town in the western part of the region known as Bohemia, not very far from the border with the Bavarian state of Germany. It is the home of Pilsner-style beer. 🙂 It is not near Moravia or Slovakia.

My paternal great-grandfather was from Horšovský Týn, not far from Plzen. I have had the privilege of touring the last house he lived in before immigrated. He may or may not have been ethnic German as the western border region was a mix of ethnic Czechs and Germans 200 years ago. When he came to Wisconsin in the US, he married a German girl from a small town in Bavaria, also not far from the border.

My mother’s family is mostly from the area around České Budějovice in the South Bohemia region of the Czech Republic. The family mill still stands, although it no longer belongs to the family nor does it function a working grist and saw mill. I have also had the honor of touring it.

I was lucky to teach English to business professionals in Prague in the Fall of 2003 to early winter of 2004. While I was teaching in Prague, I rented a room from the Moravian widow of my Mom’s distant cousin, but I did not realize we were related by marriage until my time in Prague was almost over. Had I more time to story the Czech language while I was there, I might have picked up a slight accent that was different from the Prague accent.

I have long considered myself at least 50% Bohemian/Czech (from Mom) with the other half being a mix of Bavarian-German and probably Bohemian-German (from Dad).

Bohemia is a region within the modern-day Czech Republic. For a time, it was sovereign and independent kingdom, but that ended with the defeat of the ethnic and mostly Protestant Czechs by the Catholic Hapsburg forces at the Battle of White Mountain* in November 1620 during the Thirty Years War. But that is a another long story… just like the story of the Celtic Boii that gave rise to the word Bohemia or the folk story of the origin of the word/name Czech.

*the site of the Battle of White Mountain, or Bílá Hora, is now not far from a stop at the end of one of the tram lines in Prague. I have also visited the site of the battle because it features on one version of my family’s coat of arms.

I’m not Bohemian in my “immediate” 10-12 generations that I know of, although my late father suspected that some of his family may have originally been Polish Jews and the name got “changed” in America to throw the scent off the trail, so to speak…

But here in Kansas, USA, there are quite a few towns where they identify as “Czech” publicly (like newspaper articles – I guess they gave up trying to educate the reporters that “Bohemia” came first before “Czech” etc.??), or usually, in private – like at the dances at the “SOKOL Hall”, they would refer to themselves as “Bohemian” – or even “Bohunks”. We had neighbors – the Vavra family (one of their granddaughters is a rocket scientist working in Texas at Goddard Space Center ?)… and classmates – Volavka’s – Subara’s. My husband had a co-worker named Humlicek. Quite a few others. I can’t think of all the names. But many in South Central Kansas in Caldwell, KS close to the KS/OK border, and around Wilson, KS which is closer to Nebraska.

One year, one of the Vavra daughters decided she and her (German) boyfriend and their kids all needed new Czech costumes for a big Czech festival – and she hired my mom and my sister and me to do the embroidery and sewing. She got the patterns for the folkloric floral embroidery and selected the colors she wanted (reds, blues, whites, golds etc basically colors of your flag above!)…and I guess they were authentic enough to be first place winners in most of the gender/age group categories that she and her family were represented in. The two divisions where the kids came in second place, the first place winners had won with costumes that had been handmade in Czechoslovakia and sent to the kin in America! I guess a little biased there – I didn’t get a chance to compare the craftsmanship of our handiwork compared to the ones imported from Czeckia… but oh well, it was fun, very interesting, and a unique experience.

I’ve no idea if this blog is still being maintained, as it looks like most of the blogs and comments are 5+ years old?