Chaloupek Name

In the Czech language, CHALUPA, CHALUPNIK and CHALOUPKA mean cottager, or someone who owns a small house with no farm land. CHALOUPEK is a diminutive form, indicating the owner of a very small house. So it is not an uncommon name, and two people with the name CHALOUPEK are not necessarily related to each other any more than to another Czech. The initial consonant is impossible for Americans to pronounce, so some immigrants changed the name to HALOUPEK or KALOUPEK. Leighton KALOUPEK tells me that anyone named KALOUPEK is related to him (and me, since we are 3rd cousins). I know most of the HALOUPEKs, and the name is in danger of extinction. However, there were a few HALOUPEKs in Chicago who I have not connected with my tree. Most of the CHALOUPEKs kept the CH, there are large branches in Nebraska and Oklahoma that seem to be unrelated to my folks. Please see my CHALOUPEK Branches page for more information on those.

The first two columns are forms of Chaloupka, and the next pair of columns are forms of Chaloupek. The first 7 lines are singular forms, and the next 7 lines are plural. Thanks to Denny Slehofr for this. Denny says the the English sentence “František Chaloupek is one of the Chaloupeks“ would be in Czech “František Chaloupek je jedním z Chaloupků“. From Denny: "Regarding your wish to learn Czech language, I may assure you that it is much more complicated than English, because in Czech almost every word may have many forms (not just one or two) depending on context. One of the main sources of confusion for foreigners is called declension. It is a system of grammatically determined modifications of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals. Czech language has seven cases (1-7): nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and instrumental. This essentially means that a word can have 7 possible forms in singular and 7 in plural. Some forms are the same in more than one place in each paradigm and some are irregular (see this link)."

Before 1854, there were no CHALOUPEKs in the US, that I know about. By 1880, there were a dozen or so CHALOUPEK households in the US, all immigrants from Bohemia, and it seems that most of them were unrelated. Three of these unrelated CHALOUPEK families settled in the area of Chelsea/Belle Plaine Iowa. One of these is related to me on the Posekany side. See the PRAGR page for those CHALOUPEKs. This page concerns the CHALOUPEKs on my HALOUPEK side.

Several CHALOUPEKs in Bohemia were listed as drnomistr. The English translation of this is knacker, but that term seems to have become obsolete. The drnomistr was responsible for getting rid of dead animals. They also trapped and killed stray dogs and cats, which were considered pests. Apparently, every village had a drnomistr. It was a pretty low-status profession, like garbage collector. The "knacker's yard" was usually on the outskirts of town.

There are two branches of CHALOUPEKs in my family tree. One comes from Kopidlo, and the other from Vlceves. Both are small towns in Bohemia. The Vlceves branch is described on the PRAGR page.