What's in a Prague street name
Every street in Prague, one by one.
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I could talk about myself for ages, or I could point out that https://english.radio.cz/ed-ley-englishman-recording-stories-pragues-streets-one-one-8806941 is over two years old but still largely stands (other than the Twitter links).
Category: Nusle
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Na Veselí was built in 1931. ‘Veselí’ translates as ‘hilarity’, ‘merrymaking’ or ‘mirth’. And, much as it would be lovely to assume the street got its name from that, it’s just the name of a settlement that was one here instead. I assume it’s got something in common with ‘ves’, which translates as ‘village’.
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V zálomu was built in 1931. ‘Zalomit’ is a verb translating as ‘to break’, ‘to bend’. It can also be used to mean ‘to wrap’, in the sense of ‘wrap text’. A ‘zálom’ would be a curve or a bend, but it doesn’t seem to be a very common word these days (Polish ‘załom’ gets…
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Pod lázní was built in 1925. This street is under a ‘lázeň’, which we can translate as ‘bath’. To find out where that is (sorry, was), we need to head back to Jezerka (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/03/19/prague-4-day-51-na-jezerce/) Once upon a time, a clean spring of water used to flow from Jezerka to Vyšehrad (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/26/prague-2-day-118-vysehradska/). As far back as…
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Svážná was built in 1925. ‘Svažovat se’ is a verb translating as ‘slope (down)’, ‘descend’ or ‘dip’. And that’s exactly what this street does, towards central Nusle. The associated noun – ‘svah’ – translates as ‘slope’, as in ‘lyžařský svah’, which is a ski slope or a ski run. It can also be translated as ‘hillside’.…
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Nad Nuslemi was built in 1925. It is, quite literally, ‘above Nusle’, and also serves as a reminder that, in Czech, Nusle is plural. I thought this might be because it was formed by the combination of Upper (Horní) and Lower (Dolní) Nusle… but it seems those were already plural too. One famous resident of…
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Na Jezerce was built in 1925. A spring called Jezerka is mentioned way back in Cosmas’ Chronica Boemorum (written from 1119 to 1125). Apparently, Libuše – she who predicted the founding of the city of Prague (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/23/prague-2-day-93-libusina/) – used to go here to get water to bathe in. In the Middle Ages, there was a…
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Vyšší was built in 1925. If you’re walking up a hill, you might start in the lower parts (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/03/16/prague-4-day-48-dolni/). And then end up in the upper parts (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/03/17/prague-4-day-49-horni/). But sometimes, that’s not the peak, and you may end up even higher – which is exactly what Vyšší means. For some vocabulary – thankfully less filled…
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Horní was built in 1925. The street sign pic is temporarily stolen from Prague 4’s website, because I can’t find the one I took. Readers of yesterday’s post (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/03/16/prague-4-day-48-dolni/) may not be too surprised to know that ‘lower’ is followed by ‘upper’ when it isn’t followed by ‘lowest’. Or, therefore, that the ‘horní komora’ or ‘horní…
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Dolní was built in 1925. Two streets ago, we talked about Jaurisova (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/02/26/prague-4-day-46-jaurisova/). Jaurisova goes up a hill from east to west. The first street leading off Jaurisova, when heading upwards, is this one. And ‘dolní’ is Czech for ‘lower’. I should warn you that this is part of a trilogy, so don’t go expecting…
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Pod pramenem was built in 1932. It translates as ‘under the spring’, and the spring in question is called Jezerka, as is the park that you can see in the map above. I would go into more detail, but it’s really more of a day 51 kind of story.
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Jaurisova was built in 1920. Pankrác Jauris was born in 1847, and was a mayor of Michle. There’ll be plenty of Michle coming up in future posts – indeed, this street is partially there, partially in Nusle. So, for now, I’ll keep it brief and say that the earliest written mention we have of Michle…
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As the street is named after Nusle, this was going to be day one of the series, until I realised that telling the whole story of Nusle might leave me with very little to say about many of the surrounding roads. Until 1892, the part of Nuselská that was in Nusle was called Michelská silnice,…
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K podjezdu was built in 1937. A ‘podjezd’ is an underpass, and this street leads to (‘k’) one. And this particular underpass leads to Praha-Vršovice railway station, which, as you might have guessed from its name, is not in Nusle (nor is it in Prague 4, so there may be a bit of a wait…
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Maroldova was built in 1910. Luděk Marold was born in Malá Strana in 1865; he was illegitimate and took his mother’s family name. He lost both parents by the age of seven, and was then raised by his aunt, Josefa Maroldová. At the age of sixteen, he was accepted into Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts,…
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V Horkách was built in 1906. A ‘hora’ is a mountain; a ‘horka’ is the diminutive form thereof. And the surrounding area was known as ‘Horky’ – the small mountains – at least as far back as 1841. I’m not finding it massively ‘mountainous’ here, but I guess everything’s relative. It’s also the name of…
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Kloboučnická was nameless until 1920. Our starting point is ‘klobouk’, which means ‘hat’. A diminutive form of this is ‘klobouček’, which means ‘cap’ (i.e. a little hat). Meanwhile, a ‘kloboučnictví’ would either be a place where hats are made, or where they’re sold. Apparently, this trade is called ‘millinery’, which may be something everybody else…
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Bartoškova was built in 1910. Theodor Bartošek was born in Ždánice, in South Moravia, in 1877; his father was a judge. After finishing school in Brno in 1897, he moved to Prague to study law and philosophy, where one of the professors who had the greatest impact on him was one Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/01/prague-2-day-156-masarykovo-nabrezi/).…
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U Křížku was built in 1930. A ‘křížek’ is a small cross (a regular-sized cross is a ‘kříž’), and this was once the name of… something round here, probably involving the Holy Cross. There’s a hill originally named after the Holy Cross, and colloquially also known as Křížek, in Prague 3, and, if you live round…
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Družstevní was built in 1920. The street name is an adjective which derives from ‘družstvo’, meaning ‘association’, ‘collective’ or ‘co-op’. For many, the word has communist connotations – a ‘zemědělské družstvo’ is what we would call a cooperative farm, although it also translates as ‘agricultural cooperative’, and, as Dairy Farmers of America and similar organisations…
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U Pernštejnských was built in 1938, but was nameless until 1947. The Pernštejns were a noble family originating in south-west Moravia. They reached the peak of their power in the 1500s, becoming one of the three richest families in the Czech Lands. However, by the mid-1600s, they were no more, as the last of the…
What's in a Prague street name 