What's in a Prague street name

Humpolecká was built in 1941, and this is one case where highlighting roads in red doesn’t work very well.

Humpolec is a town in the Vysočina Region, about 23 km northwest of Jihlava, with approximately 12,000 residents.

The first verified written mention is from 1233, when the Order of Teutonic Knights sold some local property to the Želiv Monastery (remember that name).

The village passed through various owners, including the Order of the Crusaders with the Red Star (whose monastery there’s a 99.9999% chance you’ve been past if you’ve ever been to Prague, even for the day: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/10/16/prague-1-day-198-krizovnicke-namesti/).

A Hussite outpost in the Hussite Wars (1419 to 1434), Humpolec was, like so many places, confiscated after the Battle of Bílá Hora in 1620, and given to Catholic families.

Becoming a town in 1807, Humpolec developed a thriving cloth guild, and became known as the Bohemian Manchester. Nowadays, the town is best known for the Family Brewery Bernard (https://www.bernard.cz/).

It’s also known for being pretty much the midpoint between Prague and Brno on the D1 motorway.

The Humpolec resident with the biggest impact on Czech history – and on the Prague public transport system – is the priest Jan Želivský (1380-1422; https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/19/prague-3-day-23-jana-zelivskeho/).

But Humpolec really does quite well when it comes to people of note. Aleš Hrdlička (1869-1943) became the first curator of physical anthropology of the Smithsonian Museum in 1904.

Continuing the transatlantic migrant theme, Josef Stránský (1872-1936) conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 to 1923.

Anna Sychravová (born 1873) was one of the first women elected to the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies, where she served until her early death in 1925.

While Anděla Kozáková-Jírová (1897-1986) was the first woman in Czechoslovakia to be awarded a university law degree (this picture is from the day of her graduation in 1922).

Finally, Ivan Martin Jirous (1944-2011), known as Magor, was the artistic director of the Plastic People of the Universe: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/nov/29/ivan-jirous.

Whoever named the streets round here clearly had a thing for Humpolec and its surroundings: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/04/12/prague-4-day-354-dudinska/ and https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/04/13/prague-4-day-355-senozatska/ are both named after local settlements.