What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 21 January 2024.

A smečka is a pack (e.g. of dogs or wolves), or a pride (of lions). It originally meant ‘loop’ or ‘dog-collar’, before being attributed to a whole group of animals rather than simply to one animal’s neck.

This could be the reason for the street’s name, but apparently there’s another theory.

The street was first mentioned as ‘Smekhacz’ in 1399, possibly a derivation of ‘smek hače’ (he took off his trousers).

This doesn’t seem inappropriate given the number of, erm… ‘clubs’ on this street, and suggests things haven’t changed that much over the centuries.

From 1880 to 1881, number 13 was lived in by a certain Nikola Tesla. He’d come to Prague to study, but was disadvantaged by not knowing either Ancient Greek or Czech. He went to some lectures, but moved to Budapest in 1881 to take up work at the Telephone Exchange.

Next door, at number 15, is the K. E. Macan Library and Printing House for the Blind, currently with over 5,000 registered users.

At number 26, the Činoherní klub was founded in 1965.

On 19 November 1989, the Civic Forum was founded here.

There’s some incredible footage of this even here, and the home-camera nature of it makes it all the more fascinating:

Until 1948, the building had been the headquarters of the Czech Women’s Club. Fittingly, it was built by Milada Petříková-Pavlíková, the first woman in Czechoslovakia to graduate as an architect (in 1921).

In 1959, the first performance by the Divadlo Semafor – specifically the opening performance of Člověk z půdy (Man from the Attic) – took place here:

Finally, near the corner with Václavák is one of the entrances to Palác Fénix, opened in 1930. It includes the Studio Eva Theatre, whose simple but effective posters are a feature of pretty much every tram journey I take in Prague.

For anyone wondering if I’ve skipped a street: Štěpánská is partially in Prague 2, so it already got its own post last spring: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/01/prague-2-day-167-stepanska/.