What's in a Prague street name

Šífařská was built in 1998.

In Czech, a ‘ship’ is a ‘loď’. For those wondering, yes, ‘łódź’ is also Polish for ‘ship’, but there’s no consensus that that’s the reason why Łódź has its name. But it gives me a nice excuse to share some pictures of my 2013 trip to Łódź all the same.

Of course, Prague used to have a large number of German speakers, and German words would find their way into colloquial Czech. Such as ‘Schiff’ turning into ‘šíf’, an alternative to ‘loď’.

It then follows that somebody working in ship-related tasks would be called a ‘šífař’ (or a ‘lodník’).

In this case, the ‘šífaři’ would have been involved in floating wood down the Vltava. They would more commonly be known as ‘plavci’, and so there’s a bit more about them on https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/26/prague-2-day-123-plavecka/.