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).

  • Prague 3, day 1: Koněvova

    Starting off where it all began – this was originally posted on Twitter on 24 April 2022.

    Here begins a series in which I walk along the very long street immediately to the north of my flat and examine the names of the streets leading off it, one by one.

    We’ll start with the very long street itself, especially as its name is somewhat controversial (evidence included in second pic), so, without further ado, I give you Koněvova.

    It was called Vídeňská silnice (Vienna Highway) until 1872-ish, Poděbradova (Poděbrady Street) until 1940, and again between 1945 and 1946. In the intervening years, under the Nazi occupation, it was known as Brünner Straße (Brno Street).

    Ivan Konev (1897-1973) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union. He led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front in WW2.

    He entered Prague with the Red Army on 9 May 1945, the final day of the Prague Uprising (which didn’t stop the Red Army for taking credit for the preceding successes of the Uprising either).

    In 1956, Konev became commander of the Warsaw Pact armed forces, and led the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring. And yet this street is still named after him.

    Which is why petitions sometimes happen: https://english.radio.cz/residents-seek-change-name-street-honouring-red-army-commander-8125346…. Though it could be a bureaucratic nightmare (it really is that long a street).

    Continuing with a shorter street and shorter story tomorrow.

  • Intro time.

    Hey. You may have come over here from my Twitter account, in which case you can feel free to skip this part (let’s be fair, you’re free to skip if no matter where you’ve come from).

    My name’s Ed, I’m British, I’m 40 at the time of writing if not necessarily at the time you’re reading this, and I’m lucky enough to call Prague home. For several years now and hopefully also for all the years to come.

    In April of this year, I got the idea of researching all the streets in my immediate vicinity (Žižkov in Prague 3), finding out how they got their names, and then writing about them on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/ed__ley), one street a day. What started out as an OCD-fuelled experiment (‘What’s in a Prague 3 street name’) turned into something that was just too interesting to stop, and about 6.3 months later, I’d got through the entire district. And people started taking an interest, especially towards the end.

    Season 2, AKA ‘What’s in a Prague 2 street name’, started just under two weeks ago, and people seem to be enjoying it. It’s connecting to me to interesting people in a way which I never knew was possible. So of course this would be the moment at which Twitter would decide to possibly go to sh*t (side note: there are too many people who get a kick out of the idea of being part of the Apocalypse, aren’t there).

    I don’t know what the heck is going to happen with Twitter, although I do know that I’m not fully sold on Mastodon yet, let alone anything else – so the obvious, constructive thing to do is to take my posts about the streets of Prague, past, present and future, and make them into a website. Because I love writing about these streets too much to stop just yet.

    Watch this space.