The Czech Republic: What’s in a name

In search of a shorter label for the country

BELOVED as it is of headline writers, for whom anything Czech will be in the post on the rare occasions when it is not being bounced or mated, the name of the Czech Republic gives little pleasure to Czechs themselves. It is too formal for everyday use, they say. Nobody takes a holiday in the “Kingdom of Spain” or the “Commonwealth of Australia”. So why must they take one in “the Czech Republic”?

Unfortunately, the Czechs have been unable to agree on a one-word informal name for their country, whether in Czech or English, since the peaceful demise of Czechoslovakia 11 years ago (the other half became Slovakia, which works fine so long as it is not confused with Slovenia). The Czech Senate has just held a public hearing on the issue, which circled, as such discussions always do, around the one or two possibilities that Czechs accept as logical, but cannot bring themselves to love.

One problem is that a short name risks reminding older Czechs of the contemptuous terms “Tschechei” and “Rest-Tschechei” that the Nazis pinned on the rump of the country after seizing the Sudetenland in 1938. Modern Germans have got over this by coining the name “Tschechien”. The Czechs have welcomed this, despite confusion with Tschechenien, the German name for Chechnya, a war-torn bit of Russia.

Yet Czech businessmen still want an official short English name, so that they can brand their goods more snappily. Some have opted for “Made in Czech”. But this is the grammatical equivalent of “Made in British” or “Made in a Briton”: the first nonsensical and the second faintly unsettling. The obvious choice would be “Czechia”, which would complement Slovakia. It has been favoured for years by the foreign ministry and tourist authorities. But the natural English pronunciation, “Check-ee-ya”, grates on Czech ears. They would prefer the ch to be softer, as in the German Ich.

The common short name in Czech, “Cesko” (pronounced chess-go), also evokes mixed feelings, but is gaining acceptance for want of anything better. Vaclav Havel, when he was president, said it made his “flesh creep”. Others complain that it evokes the splitting of the country - Czechoslovakia with the Slovakia amputated. And some argue that it sounds too much like Tesco, a supermarket chain prominent in Prague (and noted for its Czech-outs).

The Czech Republic is on the look out for a single name to call the country: Cesko, Czechia, or what?