Czech Orthography

+19 votes
303 views

Czech orthography changed in the middle of the 19th century. Before that time many accented letters were not and many other letters and diphthongs were written differently. I have argued for years now to change the Czech Roots naming rules to "use what appears in the records." There are a few reasons to do that:

  • Many descendants of formerly Bohemian residents don't know the modern variations of the names they are dealing with. It is in my opinion easier to deal with this by sticking to the primary record instead of conjecturing what might be the modern version of the name.
  • Many people emigrating from Bohemia stuck with the spelling of their names they were used to resulting in many people in Austria, Germany, and also the USA with Czech names spelled in the old orthography. We stick with their "old" names from documents outside Bohemia and then all of a sudden when we get back far enough we are supposed to change their names to modern Czech?
  • In my quick review of other localities I have found a preponderance of opinion to stick with the primary document instead of streamlining the names to some modern version.

I do wish we could come to some agreement for these issues instead of having my 18th century and older family members "modernized" every so often.

WikiTree profile: Tomáš Ruth
in Policy and Style by Helmut Jungschaffer G2G6 Pilot (591k points)
I appreciate your view point Helmut.  Czech genealogy has been the most complicated and frustrating thing for me to understand.  I have been researching my Southern Bohemian roots for four years and do not know a language other than English.  My memory is not good so I keep notes as I learn new things and then try to find these notes.  I make mistakes but I like WikiTree because we source our research so others can review the data and make corrections when needed.  What is the goal?  To grow the tree, to be accurate 100%?  These documents have variations including: Latin, German, Czech, time period variations, misspellings and the use of Vulgo surnames (there are probably some I missed).  For me, it is very complicated and not consistent.  The spelling can change from birth to death in some cases.  As I go back in time, I usually keep the modern version (it is often found in the church record indexes) because I know they are my ancestors and at least that much is correct.  But I struggle with what is the right thing to do.  How do you document a child born with the Vulgo surname and the next one with non-Vulgo surname?  Some members document both within the LNAB field.  It would be nice to have some guidelines for us "non" Czech language learners.  I always appreciate your guidance.

5 Answers

+10 votes
Well said.
by George Fulton G2G6 Pilot (620k points)
+3 votes
Can any of the Finland project guides be applied here? The Swedish patronymics in the original Swedish church records are retained rather than modernizing to the current Finnish equivalent.
by T Stanton G2G6 Pilot (345k points)
+5 votes
I agree with you that we should "use what appears in the records." I am Czech and I have been using this rule in recording of my Czech ancestors for almost 30 years of my research. It can mean that the last names can have different spelling in each generation but I have not found any other way which would be historically correct. I also know that the Czech nobility (like e.g. Czernin or Lobkowicz) keeps the historical spelling of their last names even today.
by Karel Neckar G2G Crew (890 points)
+6 votes

Dear all,

I hope I understand your concerns, Helmut, and I completely agree with Philip.

I went through the guidance (Help:Name Fields for Czech Names (wikitree.com) and Help:Name Fields (wikitree.com)), summed up the existing rules and wrote a few comments on the rules. Since the guidance on Czech surnames takes the precedence before the general guidance, I am listing those rules first.

1. Females should use the correct naming conventions. This is the name they were given at birth (see below). Czech females will have a birth surname with -ová at the end of their surname (see exceptions). German females will have a birth surname with -in at the end of their surname (see exceptions). This is not to be confused with the Latin -in. (I think this a sound rule for Czech surnames used by ethnic Czechs. However, I am not so sure about the -in suffix for German surnames. It looks anachronistic, and I would recommend to drop the requirement for a German feminine suffix, but I defer to the native German speakers here.)

2. Use [the suffixes] for all names regardless of time period or what's written in the parish record. (My interpretation is that this rule does not explicitly mandate the post-1850 standard for all Czech surnames, but it implicitly supposes it by spelling the -ová ending in this standard and using the examples of the surnames in this standard.)

3. Use no Latin names even if the records were written in Latin (using –in.) This is not to be confused with German ending -in. (my interpretation is that Latin first names and surnames should be replaced with German or Czech forms based on ethnicity and guesswork)

4. Use their conventions instead of ours...These are meant to be the names they would prefer, not the names we prefer to call them...For example, English-speaking WikiTree users know William the Conqueror. But French-speakers know Guillaume le Conquérant. Even if 90% of current WikiTree users speak English, William should be Guillaume in our database because he himself spoke French. (my interpretation: replace German or Latin records of first names with Czech forms if the individuals are obviously Czech; and vice versa, Czech or Latin with German if they are German; this should also be the general rule for surnames, but there are special rules for LNAB below:)

5. [LNAB] is usually the formal name as it appears in official documents at the time of birth. However, it may not be exactly what appears in a birth record if

a. [t]here was a spelling mistake or error in the document, or

b. if the family name was more commonly spelled in a different way at the time of the birth [...] (my comment to both a. and b.: compared to what standard?)

What was the standard in, say, 1750? The scribes could refer to the Jesuit Bible translations from 1600s-1700s based on Bible of Kralice from 1613, which is surprisingly close to the 1850s standard, with diacritics and vowel length (most of the changes is just streamlining, w -> v, au -> ou, j -> í, ss -> š, g -> j). However, the scribes generally did not stick to the relatively high 1613 standard, especially when using Latin or German for the record as a whole. Digraphs reappeared and vowel length and diacritics mostly disappeared. Forcing the 1613 standard could be an option, but IMHO this would be even more hassle than applying the post-1850 standard.

What the people themselves would use: most of them were illiterate, but they would likely pronounce their names as we would pronounce them by reading the 1613 or post-1850 transcription. Czech phonology did not change much since 1400.

Fortunately, there is also rule 6:

6. Explain it all in the biography. (I always include the spelling from the records in the biography or in the "other surnames" field. I have a good experience with that, as the google search on wikitree is very efficient in finding the exact profiles that contain the exact spelling. Maybe this could be the way forward - including all of the variants somewhere in the profile.)

My recommendation is to maintain the post-1850 standard in Czech for first names and surnames and include all of the alternative recorded forms in the biography or other surnames sections (fully apply rules 1-4 and 6 with the exception of German feminine suffix, and interpret rule 5 in accordance with rules 2 and 4).

The advantages of a post-1850 transcription:

* it provides, for the most part, a one-to-one relationship between a letter and a sound, eliminating most alternative spellings

* it makes it easier to search for common ancestors and grow the common tree

* it makes it easier to check for spelling mistakes by googling for modern surnames or at kdejsme.cz

* articles and books by professional historians and genealogists use this standard, unless quoting the records directly

* it seems to be quite natural for Czech users at wikitree and other databases (by randomly looking at the family trees of Czech users)

The second option, i.e. enforcing the 1613 standard, would be even more difficult than keeping the post-1850 standard. I haven't seen much Middle English spelling in medieval profiles from England, anyway.

The third option, i.e. relaxing rules 5a. and 5b. and going for LNAB as recorded only (rule 5) would mean resigning to correcting mistakes and unifying the forms of surnames, and making the entries less searchable. Just imagine searching for and trying to connect all those Kregczi, Krejczi, Krejcži, Krejčí, Kregczirz, Krejčíř, Kregczirik, Kregczirzin, Kregczirziczka, Kregczirzikin, Kregczirzowa etc. Maybe the wikitree engine is good enough to connect them through the date of birth, maybe not.

I agree that it can be quite tough to encourage wikitreers, especially those with a limited knowledge of Czech, to use a standard post-1850 forms of the surnames. It is an ideal that is hard to achieve so help from native Czech speakers is necessary and much tolerance is in order, but I think it's a good rule, as the final goal is connecting our "private" trees to one big common tree.

My apologies for the super long post,

Best wishes and Merry Christmas!

by Tomáš Minárik G2G5 (5.7k points)

Tomáš, in my opinion Czech genealogy is quite unique because of the regional archive system providing relatively easy access to primary documents unlike the situation in many other countries. This makes it possible to base genealogy almost entirely on primary records, at least as far back as the early 1600's. I believe it should be our goal to have as many profiles from the former Kingdom of Bohemia sourced with primary documents. If we base our research on such documents variations in family names become secondary.

As a result of these thoughts I think the entire Czech naming rules should be scrapped and replaced with the simple advice to go with the record. Other genealogists in different languages have attempted to standardize their names to their currently modern style, e.g. French Canada, with the result that several comprehensive genealogies of French settlers there now exist with different naming rules based on what was "modern" at the time they were published. Is modern Czech going to stay the same forever? Take the female ending -ová, there is a small group active in the Czech Republic trying to get rid of it because of its possessive connotations. Let's just ponder for a moment that at some time in the future this movement becomes strong enough to reach their goal and abolish the female ending, are some future genealogists then having to "correct" all the female Czech profiles?

As for the German female ending -in, it was the official name form until the 18th century and still used in some (mostly Southern) parts until the early 18th century. It should be kept when found in the records. There is no Latin ending -in, I think that refers to the ending -iana occasionally found in Latin records.

Helmut, thank you for the explanation about the -in and -iana suffixes. I understand the problems of having to reconstruct the "real" surname. It would be great if we could include as many surnames per profile as possible, while still making them relevant for a search. As I wrote, I try to do that in the Biography section and it has generally worked for me, e.g. when I tried to find a profile referring to a surname only in the biography.

However, even if the Czech guidance (rules 1-3) were scrapped, the default rule from the general wikitree guidance (rule 5) is not just LNAB as recorded, but rather LNAB as recorded+fix mistakes and errors+choose the predominant spelling at that time, which would mean preferring the 1613 standard, which is doable but not very comfortable, doubly so for non-native speakers, and I am afraid that this way we would really end up like the French Canadians.

Going for "hard LNAB as recorded" would mean drafting a new Czech guidance going in the opposite direction from rules 4 and 5 in the general guidance. Would this mean fixing no mistakes, fixing some mistakes (but according to what standard?), not unifying surnames for siblings and parents, keeping the German spelling of Czech surnames or randomly combining Czech, German and Latin spelling of first names and surnames? This would create more problems than it would solve, for all the reasons listed in my previous post. Using the Familysearch.org search function on Slovak surnames in the digitized index is sometimes a pain, exactly because they left all of the mistakes in the transcription, often introduced more mistakes, and are not fixing them (probably due to a lack of resources rather than a lack of good will). Wikitree should not be a sum of static copies of the records themselves, but rather a living tree facilitating interconnections and interpretations on top of the records.

-ová: this (or other less formal suffixes) has been used since the introduction of surnames, so again, not using it or using it inconsistently would create more problems than it would solve. Of course, when an entry in a birth record refers to "a daughter of XY", the female form is not readily available, which is a pity. In Latin and German entries of Czech surnames the suffixes are sometimes missing for obvious reasons, since the languages are mostly not using suffixes. I think rule 1 (to add the Czech suffix) is a natural interpretation of rule 4 (use what the ancestors would use).

Nowadays, there is an increasing number of women not using a female form, but it's still rare. Current law accommodates those women who feel more comfortable using the male form, but the language is very much resilient in preferring the addition of the suffix to almost any surname of almost any origin, so it is not going away any time soon. BTW Lithuanian and Latvian have suffixes for both male and female forms, even in foreign surnames. There is no wikitree guidance for other Slavic languages and their surnames (-ov, -ova, -in, -ina, -sky, -ska), but I suppose they would use female forms in LNAB where applicable and available. I know that the Polish language is about half way in shifting away from female forms, except for adjectival surnames, and there are Slavic languages which are fine without female forms altogether, so yes, maybe in the future there will be no suffixes, but we are not there yet by far. Even then, nobody would be removing the suffixes for existing profiles, because suffixes are what the ancestors would have used in the first place.
+3 votes

Hi all,

Sorry for stirring up this old conversation, but as a wikitree-newbie it is quite important to me.

First of all, I thank you all for your thoughts, it all got me thinking. 

My humble viewpoint on the matter is like this.

Bohemia and Moravia were part of a multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-cultural society over centuries until they became part of Czech Republic. 

With that in mind, we can‘t be sure, that we know who was considering him- or herself as Czech, German, Polish, Croatian, etc. during all those centuries. 

For me the common ground in regard of sources is therefore the way how the catholic church and later other confessions like the reformed churches  saw this issue. It does not matter which nationality a priest or scribe had, it mattered that there were made recordings of the genealogical whereabouts of people in a certain way. That means in first place, the names are focused on male lineage as a naming convention, which contradicts the slawic naming convention. 

Therefore, I would like to make an easy but pragmatic suggestion, which could work for every one:

1. stick to the sources (if it is written in czech, the LNAB and the first name is czech, if it is German, then be it German, if it is latin, … you get the gist. :-) 

Family dependencies are made by the researchers, so the LNAB is not as important as long as the researcher get a tool at hand to find the actual LNABs/ profiles and do the connections needed to be done

2. Create a project where researchers can fill in all variants they find to a certain name, like the Rosetta stone we all learned in History lessons about. 

Each name variant to be entered should have been related to at least one real source, so that others can see the plausability, get a relation to the time period and just to be transparent.

3. If someone is entering profiles with known name variants he or she can do a link to that project and may include name variants as well in the biography of this profile.

The idea of a Rosetta Stone is not from me, but was done by a catholic scribe or priest who had to record the marriage of my Double-Great-Grandfather and he „hardwired“ both name variants into the marriage record (KRUTAK and KRUTIAK). This is the only evidence I have so far, that both variants could be used for the same name at the same time!

== Summary ==

With the approach of a „Rosetta Stone“ for Czech roots project are we:

- true to the source, always 

- the naming convention reflects that of WikiTree and other Genealogy software and is not contradicting anymore

- give researchers the tool to search for other name variants without guessing

- focus on profiles and relations, not LNAB, the relation between profiles should be described anyway 

- we de-escalate this hot topic on how to name LNABs based on nationality/heritage and using common ground

- this method is future proof, even for researchers with no knowledge about the langueages to be encountered in records, they find what they are looking for (even if it is misspelled). 

- this idea has great potential as it could comprehend One Name Studies (ONS) by showing all profiles of the common tree related to a certain name variant

-  I would suggest the same approach for first names (Latin, Czech, German, English, etc.

- Orthographic changes like the Genitiv in names of czech records could be addressed. See examples below.

I hope this could end the uncertainty around naming conventions and it is something we all could agree on.

I do not have knowledge about the wikitree technicalities, but I would like to participate in such project to get it going.

== Examples: ==

1. xxx syn Jana Krutaka —> Jan Krutak / Note: -a is a casus and shouldn‘t be in LNAB

2. Catharina Krutakin —> Catharina Krutakin / Note: -in is a feminine variant of the name. Used in South Moravia until 1750 and the use of it is more or less extinct after that era

3. Search for Krutiak —>  Krutak, Krutack, Krutakin, Krutag, Krutakova, etc. / Note: the Variant Krutiak was mentioned ….

5.Jan —> Johann, Joannes, Hans, John, etc.

Do you like this suggestion? I am open to discuss further details.

Best regards, Stephan.

by Stephan Krutak G2G1 (1.8k points)
This post seems to be exactly the help I need.

My family is predominately German however, there is a branch of my tree than lived for centuries in Bohemia. There are some surnames that I'm trying to determine are of Czech ethnicity.

The first is Stiepanin. It comes from the middle of the 18th century in baptismal recorders. There are two people, Anna Stiepanin and her father, Johannes Stiepana. It has been suggested that these people could have been Czech (ie. Štěpan) but written in the German way.

The others are Schmaus (Schmous) and Frabscha. These seem German but do also have Czech equivalents (Frabša and Šmaus).

These people lived in Bonětice (Großwonetitz).

Are any of these names Czech? The Stiepanin is most interesting to me as although it is written with a German form, certainly doesn't seem German.

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