Czech and Slovak Personal Names


The aim of the current page is to provide information about the structure of Czech and Slovak surnames and to discuss selected cataloging issues involving these names.

1. Structure of Czech and Slovak surnames

Male surnames may take the form of nouns (e.g., Roubínek, Novák, Havel) or adjectives with the masculine ending -ý (e.g., Novotný, Nepomucký). Some male names in the form of nouns end in -a (e.g., Svoboda, Cibulka).

Female surnames almost always take the form of feminine adjectives and end in -á. For adjectival male surnames, the feminine ending -á replaces the masculine ending -ý (e.g., Novotná is the feminine equivalent of Novotný), while the suffix -ová is added to male surnames in the form of a noun (e.g., Nováková, Roubínková, Svobodová).

Note that Czech and Slovak women living outside of the Czech Republic and Slovakia may opt to use the masculine form of their surname instead of the feminine one.

Surnames in the plural denote more than one person and may take masculine or feminine endings (e.g., Novotní [m.pl.] or Novotné [f.pl.] ; Novákovi [m.pl.; for a husband and wife pair], Novákové [m.pl.; for two brothers], or Novákovy [f.pl.; for two sisters] in Czech; Novákovci [m.pl.; for a husband and wife pair, or for two brothers] or Novákovy [f.pl.; for two sisters] in Slovak).

2. Plural forms of names and name authority files

Note that surnames in the plural may occasionally occur in the names of writing teams made up of married couples or siblings. If the authorial team is well-known, prolific, and writes consistently under a given joint name, then the plural form of the name may have an authorized form as a corporate body, which should be used as an access point for that team in bibliographical records.

Example (in MARC format):

BRATŘÍ ČAPKOVĚ

ZE ŽIVOTA HMYZU

Komedie o třech aktech s předehrou a epilogem

ORBIS PRAHA 1938

Here, Bratří Čapkové (= The Čapek brothers) is the corporate body name for the writing team composed of the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek, who published several works under this name. Accordingly, this joint name serves as the main access point for the work in question and is recorded in the 110 field of the bibliographical record:

110 2 Bratří Čapkové

245 10 Z života hmyzu : ǂb komedie o třech aktech s předehrou a epilogem / ǂc Bratří Čapkové.

If, however, the authorial team is not prolific and does not write consistently under a joint name, then they do not have a single authorized name as a corporate body but each member of the team will be entered separately under his or her own name.

Example (in MARC format):

Bytí

s Jaroslavem

Seifertem

příběh

Eva a Jan Kosovi

This title page presents a husband and wife pair, “Eva a Jan Kosovi” [i.e., “Eva and Jan Kos”], as the authors of the book. There is no evidence that there is any other book to their name and so there is no evidence that they would write consistently under this name. In this case, then, the cataloger will transcribe the plural form of the name, “Eva a Jan Kosovi” in the statement of responsibility, but the authorized forms used as access points will be Kosová, Eva, 1943- and Kos, Jan. Since Eva Kosová is listed as the first author on the title page, the authorized form of her name will be given in the 100 field of a MARC record while her husband’s name will be given in the 700 field:

100 1 Kosová, Eva, ǂd 1943- ‡e author.

245 1 Bytí s Jaroslavem Seifertem: ǂb příběh / ǂc Eva a Jan Kosovi.

700 1 Kos, Jan, ǂe author.

3. Genitive forms of personal names in statements of responsibility

As a rule, the names of authors, editors, illustrators, and other contributors given on the title pages, title page versos, and colophons of Czech and Slovak books published in the 20th and 21st centuries tend to be in the nominative case--that is to say, the “citation form” of the name used in the construction of authorized forms of personal names. However, especially in older publications, a cataloger may occasionally encounter statements of responsibility that include the name of an author or editor in the genitive case, typically following a preposition or noun. In such cases, the cataloger must convert the name to its nominative form before constructing an authorized access point from it.

Example (in MARC format):

UMĚLECKÉ SNAHY SVAZEK CCLXXXII

POHÁDKA O ZDRAVÝCH DĚTECH

Veršíky Antonie Tyrpeklové

Obrázky Zdenky Burghauserové

B. Kočí, Nakladatel v Praze, Františkovo Nábř. 14

1923

This title page is from a short illustrated book of poems in which the name of the author (Antonie Tyrpeklové) and the illustrator (Zdenky Burghauserové) are in the genitive case. In this case, the names must be converted into the nominative case -- Antonie Tyrpeklová and Zdenka Burghauserová, respectively -- before they can serve as the basis for access points in the 100 and 700 fields, while the original genitive form is transcribed in subfield ǂc of the 245 field.

100 1 Tyrpeklová, Antonie, ǂe author. [Nominative form]

245 10 Pohádka o zdravých dětech / ǂc veršíky Antonie Tyrpeklové [Genitive form] ; obrázky Zdenky Burghauserové. [Genitive form]

700 1 Burghauserová, Zdenka, ǂd 1894-1960, ǂe illustrator. [Nominative form]

4. Prepositions in surnames

Some historic Czech or Slovak surnames may consist of a place name in the genitive case preceded by the preposition z (“from”). When recording such a name, the part following the preposition should be the first element (See RDA F.11.2).

Example (in MARC format):

100 1 Koldína, Pavel Kristián z, ǂd 1530-1589

400 1 Z Koldína, Pavel Kristián, ǂd 1530-1589

5. References


Revised: Nov. 27, 2015; March 25, 2019