What's in a Prague street name

V Hodkovičkách was built in 1927.

Until 1935, it was called U rybníka, after a pond which was once in the centre of Hodkovičky, but now isn’t there at all.

There are only two streets left in Hodkovičky before we move on to Lhotka, but somehow we’ve left it until now to discuss the place itself (‘somehow’ = ‘I forgot to take a picture of the street sign until last Sunday’).

And, to do this, we actually have to start eight kilometres to the south-east, in the village of Hodkovice, first mentioned in 1314 (as Hotkowicz).

It appears that this village was also called Hodkovice, but was later called Malé (Little) Hodkovice to distinguish it from the other one; another way of saying Little Hodkovice is Hodkovičky, which is the name that’s stuck.

By 1900, Hodkovičky was a village with 346 inhabitants. When it was annexed to Prague in 1922, it gained part of Zátiší (discussed on https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/02/05/prague-4-day-301-k-zatisi/), raising its population to about 1,200.

It’s a bit bigger now, but still a lot smaller than the other parts of Prague 4 we’ve covered so far: in 2021, it had a population of 3,956.

However, it’s now bigger than the village that it was originally the ‘mini’ version of: Hodkovice has 406 people and forms a single municipality with its neighbour, Zlatníky. Quite a nice flag the two of them have: