The work week is over! Our neighborhood is quiet, people are gone enjoying a four-day weekend. July 5th and 6th are public holidays in the Czech Republic and they fall on Thursday and Friday this year. How perfect! Now what are these holidays all about?

July 5th is the Day of Slavic Missionaries Cyril and Methodius. These two Byzantine Greek brothers brought Christianity to the Great Moravian Empire in the year 863. They also created the lithurgical Slavonic language and alphabet called hlaholice (the Glagolitic alphabet). They translated the Bible and contributed to the spread of Christianity and the Old Slavonic Language (staroslověnština) throughout Great Moravia.
Read more about the Great Moravian Empire on My Czech Republic

July 6th is the anniversary of the execution of Jan Hus (John Huss), the Czech religious reformer who was burned at the stake in 1415. His death sparked the Hussite wars of the 15th century.
Read more about John Huss and the Hussite era on My Czech Republic

Today was the name day of Josef, historically one of the most common Czech first male names. It is an old name and it used to be extremely popular in the past. For example, the village of Josefovice used to have at least one Josef living in every one of its houses (I wonder how the village got its name…). Today, only four Josefs and one Josefa (the female version of the name) are registered in Josefovice.

The name is not on the top of name popularity charts anymore, having given way to names like Filip, Tomáš, Adam, Jan or Lukáš. Out of the 4,700 boys born in January 2007, only 66 were named Josef compared to 320 boys named Jan. According to TV Nova however, there are currently 266,000 Czech men named Josef, which still makes it the fourth most used Czech male name in general. It is no wonder that the Josef name day is still celebrated across the nation and mentioned on the news every year.

And what’s the deal with Pepa, one of the most common diminutive versions of the name Josef? Well, according to linguists, “Pepa” came to us from Italy where the diminutive version of “Giuseppe” (= in Czech “Josef”) is “Beppe”. Who would have thought?

Source: TV Nova

We would like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas, a peaceful holiday season and all the best in the New Year! Thank you for following the blog and posting your comments. We hope you will continue to “read us” in 2007!

Veselé Vánoce a šťastný nový rok!

Dana & Jeff