commemorative motive; Czech borderlands; renaming; urbanonymy; street names

This paper focuses on urbanonyms (street names) in the Czech borderland town of Jeseník 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 who became a majority of the population (thus most names were of German origin). This changed after 1945, when the Germans were expelled from the Czech borderlands and the town was resettled by Czechs from other regions, Slovaks, and returning émigrés. As a Czechoslovak town, Jeseník was part of the Eastern bloc until 1989. Street names are dependent on (political) developments in the society, therefore they were quite unstable and developed in a specific way in the Czech borderlands; in the post-1945 period this process involved Czechization and renaming. Currently just 16% of the original (pre-war) urbanonyms have been preserved (from the semantic point of view). This is especially due to the frequent use of street names for commemorative purposes during the post-1945 period; indeed, commemoration become the 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.