What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 21 June 2024.

We’ve spoken about how this was once an area of mills: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/11/10/prague-1-day-258-nove-mlyny/.

Specifically, ship mills, also known as ‘škrtnice’ (cutters) in Czech, existed on the Vltava as far back as the 1300s, and survived until 1818.

A ‘ship’ in Czech is a ‘loď’, and, while ‘lodní’ is the standard adjective deriving from that, ‘lodecká’ means much the same thing (yes, yes, I’m sure there are nuances).

I’ll stop the vocabulary thing now, as it’ll leave me with nothing to say in one of my next threads.

If you notice one building on Lodecká, it’s quite likely to be the award-winning Bytový dům s tělocvičnou (‘apartment building with a gymnasium’), built between 2009 and 2011.

Proving that names don’t need to be imaginative, it consists of small-size apartments and a gym, which is used by a local school and is also open to the public.