What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 1 August 2022.

Day 100 already. Huh.

Kališnická was built in 1910.

A kališník is an Utraquist. The Utraquists were a branch of the Hussites who believed that Eucharist in both kinds (i.e. bread and wine) should be administered to churchgoers.

They constituted a majority of Hussites. They were also known as the Prague Party, or the Calixtines – after the Latin word for ‘chalice’.

And ‘chalice’ being kalich in Czech is how we arrive at kališník.

While it’s obviously not what gave the street its name, a kališník obecný is a Helvella acetabulum, which is a cup-shaped fungus that looks somewhat like a cabbage leaf.

I know that a chalice looks like a cup, but can’t guarantee whether the Hussites were major cabbage-eaters.

They were Czech, though, so the chances it was absent from their diet are very low indeed.