Böhmisch Gasse, Schillerstrasse, Titova, Školní ‒ one street, many names. Urbanonymy in the Czech borderlands during the 20th century
Böhmisch Gasse, Schillerstrasse, Titova, Školní ‒ one street, many names. Urbanonymy in the Czech borderlands during the 20th century

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on urbanonyms (street names) in the Czech borderland town ofJeseník in the context of 20th-century history. In the Middle Ages the town of Jeseník(part of the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic) was settled by Germans whobecame a majority of the population (thus most names were of German origin). Thischanged after 1945, when the Germans were expelled from the Czech borderlandsand the town was resettled by Czechs from other regions, Slovaks, and returningémigrés. As a Czechoslovak town, Jeseník was part of the Eastern bloc until 1989.Street names are dependent on (political) developments in the society, therefore theywere quite unstable and developed in a specific way in the Czech borderlands; in thepost-1945 period this process involved Czechization and renaming. Currently just16% of the original (pre-war) urbanonyms have been preserved (from the semanticpoint of view). This is especially due to the frequent use of street names for commemorativepurposes during the post-1945 period; indeed, commemoration becomethe main motive for street naming. In the Czech borderlands, commemorative names(honouring important national figures) also appear on the outskirts of communities;this may be due to the fact that they are losing their commemorative function.

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