What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 29 June 2022.

Jilmová was built in 1933.

Did you really think we were done with the trees? This is one case where the Czech and English words are actually quite similar – a jilm is an elm.

Elms have been in Czech territory for 12,000 years, i.e. even longer than Miloš Zeman.

The elm has also given its name to Jilemnice, a town of 5,400 people in the Liberec Region.

YouTube hits for ‘Noční můra na Jilmové’: zero. Where is your creativity, people?

So let’s make this a bit more interesting by discussing the park that Jilmová forms the northern border of.

It’s called Židovské pece, which translates as ‘Jewish furnaces’.

The origin of the name isn’t certain. One theory is that Jews took refuge in caves here when they were expelled from Prague in the 1740s during Maria Theresa’s reign (Žižkov would not be part of Prague until 1922).

Alternatively, the name has a link to the location’s status as an execution site (used until 1866).

This was a desolate area until the 1950s. It was done up quite nicely a few years ago, but it’ll be a heck of a lot nicer when the huge amount of building work currently taking place to the south of it is over.