What's in a Prague street name

Šenácká was built in 2023. Making it younger than this series.

The internet tells me that a ‘šenák’ is a small rowing boat which is manned by two or three ‘plavci’, literally ‘swimmers’, or, in the Vltava context, the people responsible for floating wood across the Vltava when this was a mainstay of the local economy.

In other words, a ‘punt’, which you may know from being a tourist in London or Oxford or Cambridge. I can’t find a Prague-specific punt picture, so here’s a next best thing: a 1765 picture of boats in Gdańsk by Matthaus Deisch (punts are at the front).

But it seems that ‘šenák’ can also be used to denote a slightly larger boat, i.e. what we previously discussed under https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/01/24/prague-4-day-289-sifarska/.

Such a ‘šenák’ was recreated in 2018 by Jakub Schuster, then a student at the VOŠ, as commissioned by the Vltavan Association, who also came up as the very long road here is named after them: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/01/21/prague-4-day-286-vltavanu/.