Althouse: A country needs a short name, a nickname, a pet name.

April 15, 2016

A country needs a short name, a nickname, a pet name.

"France" is to The French Republic, so "Czechia" will be to The Czech Republic.

44 comments:

buwaya said...: It's about time.
"Bohemia" would have been just fine, and very cool, but they have those Moravians also.; 4/15/16, 8:14 AM
Chris N said...: My Esperanto wheel says: 'Turnip'; 4/15/16, 8:15 AM
Bob Boyd said...: I heard there's a couple stoners over there doing outrageous comedy records. Very popular with teens who listen when their parents aren't home. They're known as the Czeech and Czong of Czechia.

Not really.; 4/15/16, 8:18 AM
Bob Ellison said...: ChechRep lost early in the final vote-down.; 4/15/16, 8:30 AM
Curious George said...: Czech please.; 4/15/16, 8:31 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: The letter combination cz is Polish spelling, not Czech spelling.

For the consonant sound that we hear in the English word church, the Poles spell cz, but the Czechs spell č.

The Czech word for a Czech citizen is spelled Čech, not Czech.

English writers would transcribe that word as Chekh.

English-speakers should spell the country's new name as Chekhia.; 4/15/16, 8:49 AM
Fernandinande said...: Czech political elite, TRF beg the U.N., world: call us Czechia
"The short name Czechia appears in 646 TRF blog posts (Google search). I estimate that 2 million viewers have seen the blog posts with this word but because many readers are regulars, this amounted to about 500,000 distinct persons. Given these numbers, your humble correspondent may very well be the single most intense user – individual user or institutional user – of this English word in the world."; 4/15/16, 8:57 AM
Rob said...: Czech your privilege.; 4/15/16, 8:57 AM
MAJMike said...: 'Murca.; 4/15/16, 8:59 AM
rhhardin said...: They didn't change the international radio prefix (OK) so just keep Czechoslovakia too.; 4/15/16, 9:09 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/15/16, 9:12 AM
John said...: Putin may reclaim for Soviet, er Russia as it sounds too close to Chechnya...?; 4/15/16, 9:26 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Czechen czicken fricassee three times fast.; 4/15/16, 9:26 AM
mikee said...: The country formerly known as the Czech Republic, now known as a squiggle in eastern Europe.; 4/15/16, 9:29 AM
buwaya said...: To be fair, it's not a squiggle but a blob. A small blob, but fair is fair. Croatia is a squiggle.
The Austo-Hungarian Empire should never have gone away.; 4/15/16, 10:13 AM
Quaestor said...: "Bohemia" would have been just fine, and very cool, but they have those Moravians also.

Please no! Then they'd be just another Brooklyn Heights where every warm body belongs to a post-postmodernist artist whose defining oeuvre adorns the walls of that new startup vegan pizzeria down the street, or an unpublished novelist who's working on a screen treatment of The Brothers Karamazov (would you like to read it?). Heavens no! Then Eastern Europe would pass over the ironic shoe event horizon, making it economically impossible to manufacture anything but clunky lace-up animal-free boots worn at the end of legs with fake irezumi on the calves. For the love of God, No! Then the tidal wave influx of PBR would utterly destroy the time-honored Pilsener brewing it its homeland. Forbid, if you have a shred of decency left! Then the world would truly face peak oil as more and more of Earth's hydrocarbon would be consumed in the making of retro sunglasses.; 4/15/16, 10:22 AM
buwaya said...: Wouldn't a Bohemian (New York flavor) screenwriter working on the Brothers Karamazov just ... well, it seems a good setup for some catastrophic transformation. Good start for a screenplay.; 4/15/16, 10:33 AM
buwaya said...: As for Bohemia - well, you have a point. Better they stay Czechs. Better good soldier Schweik than anything in Brooklyn.; 4/15/16, 10:37 AM
Quaestor said...: "Bohemia" would have been just fine, and very cool, but they have those Moravians also.

If we must call it something (I was going to insert a snarky put-down here, but then I realized that accept for the Czechs and the Poles there aren't any Europeans left in Europe.) let's call it Moravia. The Moravians are much more industrious than the layabout bohunks (Bohemian didn't become a synonym for the lifestyle of the failed artist for nothing, y'known.) Besides being a ethnicity noted for delicious baked goods the Moravians also have a killer small arms industry (pun intended), and they aren't too shabby in the general aviation market either. A Moravian assault rifle will kill you nine times before you can say "Ouch!" whereas a Bohemian assault rifle will just bore you to suicide with its life story salted with random Sartre quotations. Moravian products are clearly more efficient and more merciful.; 4/15/16, 10:46 AM
buwaya said...: Beer. Here is where your plan fails. Assault rifles are all very well, but weapons are not ends in themselves. Beer, on the other hand ...; 4/15/16, 10:53 AM
Quaestor said...: Good start for a screenplay.

Scene One

ANGLE ON DRIGGS AVENUE

ADRIAN: (INTERIOR MONOLOGUE) All my friends have committed suicide. Who'll critique my screenplay now?; 4/15/16, 10:58 AM
Anonymous said...: The Nazis used to accuse Prague residents who hid anti-Hitler partisans as being guilty of caching bad Czechs.

I denounce myself.; 4/15/16, 11:00 AM
buwaya said...: And, regarding Moravians, delicious baked goods aren't ends in themselves either, though they will substantially reinforce your end, giving it more substance, as it were.; 4/15/16, 11:05 AM
Tarrou said...: No imagination. Come on people! Czechers!; 4/15/16, 11:05 AM
Quaestor said...: Here's where your plan fails

OK. Suppose we air drop 500,000 copies of Infinite Jest on Plzeň. The inhabitants will become so preoccupied interpreting the dystopian imagery to each other they'll never notice the Moravian takeover of the breweries.; 4/15/16, 11:07 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Czili's Czinese Czechers Czampion's Czech...dontcza know.; 4/15/16, 11:09 AM
Quaestor said...: No imagination. Come on people! Czechers!

Did you know that the heraldic emblem of Moravia is a red and white checkered eagle? Who said those Medieval dudes had no sense of humor?

Crown me.; 4/15/16, 11:11 AM
buwaya said...: That's where Dostoevsky comes in - Adrian drops by the used bookstore looking for a (perhaps) not yet suicided marijuana salesman of his aquaintance, runs across a copy of Karamazov, and mistaking it for something concerning a juggling act he once saw on PBS, grabs it.
The spirit of the fanatically Orthodox Dostoevsky invades his mind, finding therein the previously complacent resident demon of modern degeneracy (assuming in its value-free demonic way that he can coast, in this case as in so many others), causing a singularity in the spiritual force fields, and etc.; 4/15/16, 11:13 AM
Quaestor said...: jelink wrote: The Nazis used to accuse Prague residents...

May your L2 experience an overflow.; 4/15/16, 11:18 AM
buwaya said...: Quaestor,
Come the next set of trials at Nuremburg, I will be in a position to testify about the roots of the unprecedented cruelty of recent war -crimes. It was your idea to drop "Infinite Jest" on innocent people.; 4/15/16, 11:24 AM
Quaestor said...: ...causing a singularity in the spiritual force fields, and etc.

Jeez, I dunno... it seems like the logical trajectory is a Godzilla outbreak, which entails an apocalyptic battle with a legion of Japanese kamikaze lawyers representing Toho among other things.; 4/15/16, 11:26 AM
Quaestor said...: It was your idea to drop "Infinite Jest" on innocent people.

Who sez they're innocent?

That's my defense, and I'm sticking to it.; 4/15/16, 11:29 AM
Quaestor said...: And, regarding Moravians, delicious baked goods aren't ends in themselves either...

BTW, what happened to your lurking crocodile?; 4/15/16, 11:48 AM
lgv said...: In further news, the United States of America is changing its name to Yoosa.; 4/15/16, 12:19 PM
buwaya said...: This one ?
The buwaya is an ambush hunter.
Now you see him now you don't.; 4/15/16, 12:20 PM
Doug said...: I am an American living in Prague. I can't imagine myself using the new name. Czechia sounds to me like it belittles the country -- it makes it insignificant. I prefer the short name for the country that is used by the locals -- cesko (where in the local alphabet, the c would have a "hook" over it to make it sound like "ch", so that the word would sound like chesko).

Doug; 4/15/16, 1:12 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I have some Moravian ancestry.; 4/15/16, 1:23 PM
Quaestor said...: I have some Moravian ancestry

Moravian via Saxony?; 4/15/16, 1:33 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Yes, I think so. My ancestors were involved in the founding of Lititz, Pennsylvania:

"Lititz was founded by members of the Moravian Church in 1756 and was named after a castle (mentioned form of name is German; Czech name of this castle is Litice) in Bohemia near the village of Kunvald where the ancient Bohemian Brethren's Church had been founded in 1457. The roots of the Moravian Brethren's Church date back to the ancient Bohemian Brethren's Church."; 4/15/16, 4:34 PM
RMc said...: Czechmate!; 4/15/16, 5:53 PM
veni vidi vici said...: Sounds a bit too much like Chechnya. They might want to rethink that.; 4/15/16, 9:14 PM
Rick Lee said...: Huh... I just got back from The Czech Republic and I asked somebody that very question... is there a name for it like "Czechia"? Slovakia isn't known as The Slovak Republic". The guy I was talking to admitted that you could refer to it as "Czechia" but oddly he didn't seem to like the idea.; 4/15/16, 10:38 PM
Michael McNeil said...: If the Czechs (and Moravians) and Slovaks could accept the name “Czechoslovakia” for 75 years, but the Moravians want to be included (while the Slovaks are already out), then call it Bohemo-Moravia, or Bohemoravia.; 4/16/16, 6:30 AM
Kiril Kundurazieff said...: There are STILL too many consonants....

The Mad Macedonian
http://www.madmacedonian.com; 4/17/16, 10:02 AM