What's in a Prague street name

Československého exilu was built in 1979.

Unsurprisingly, the street was not called that in the still-a-decade-of-Communism-to-go days of 1979.

Instead, it was called what is basically the exact opposite of condemning the harsher sides of communism: it was named Pětiletky, a ‘pětiletka’ being a five-year plan.

There was a bit of a time lag between the Velvet Revolution and the renaming of the street – it took place in 1992 (would it have been Českého exilu only if the renaming had taken place in 1993? We will never know).

The street now commemorates the many Czechs and Slovaks who were forced abroad during the communist period. While exact numbers are hard to come by, I’ve seen articles saying 300,000 left in total, including 70,000 directly after the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968.

(Stop press: there is indeed an Alej Českých exulantů in Bubeneč, Prague 6, although that commemorates those who fled Bohemia 300+ years earlier)