What's in a Prague street name

Tajovského was built in 1969.

Jozef Alojz Gregor was born in Tajov, a village near Banská Bystrica, in 1874 – ten years after someone else we recently wrote about was born there (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/09/11/prague-4-day-442-murgasova/).

This is the house he grew up in.

After he finished school in Banská Bystrica in 1889, he trained to be a teacher in Kláštor pod Znievom, in northern Slovakia, until 1893, and then studied business in Prague from 1898 to 1900.

From 1893, he held a number of teaching positions, but often got into hot water because of his nationalist convictions (which will also explain why he took that study break in Prague, where he joined the Slovak cultural group Detvan).

In 1907, he married Hana Gregorová, herself a renowned writer, and observer of women’s rights, or lack thereof, in Slovakia. They are pictured in 1922 with their daughter, Dagmar.

After Prague, Gregor worked in banking, as well as a journalist. In 1912, he became secretary of the Slovak National Party Club in Martin and, in 1915, he was editor of a publication called Národný hlásnik.

In 1915 also saw Gregor being sent off to fight on the Russian front, where he defected. He joined the Czechoslovak Legions (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/12/prague-1-day-90-most-legii-legion-bridge/) in 1917, and also became editor of Hlasy, a Kyiv-based Czechoslovak publication.

Gregor returned to Slovakia in 1920, and settled in Bratislava, where he worked as head of the Legionnaires’ Office until his retirement in 1925.

As a writer, Gregor conveyed a deep attachment to his native Tajov, hence the addition of ‘Tajovský’ to his name. His writing observed the lives, needs and difficulties of ordinary Slovaks.

His prose work included 34 works published between 1893 and 1920; he also wrote 21 plays between 1896 and 1938.

He died in Bratislava in 1940, and is buried in his native Tajov, along with Hana, who died in 1958. A theatre is named after him in Zvolen.