Spelling of Czech Town Names

Maybe someone with a Czech keyboard can correct the spelling of all the Moravian town names (Czech version) that I added to the project page.

Hi Randy,
Here you find a czech keyboard online:
http://czech.typeit.org/

On the ipad (at least, the ones sold in Europe) it's even standard, as is the Slowakian keyboard.

Good luck with it!

You can correct them yourself with your US-Keyboard. Simple press the Alt-Key followed by the number of the charakter you want to write.
A table can be found here:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Typing_Czech

Trying to get some help. I know lots of ways to do it myself. But since I am already doing lots of work, I thought maybe someone else could share the burden.

Dear Randi!
Thank's for all the work you do for us.
Can't help - unfortunately
To all!!!
rember it's a commen project - help where you
can

I would suggest that for dates prior to 1918 you should give both the Czech and the GERMAN NAMES OF TOWNS AND REGIONS. i FIND IT somewhat RIDICULOUS WHEN YOU INDICTE,FOR A PERSON BORN IN THE 18TH OR 19TH CENTURY THAT HE/SHE WAS BORN IN XXX,CZECH rEPUBLIC, THE PLACE AT THE TIME BEING A PART OF THE aUSTRO-hUNGARIAN EMPIRE- YOU COULD ADD. ,IN BRACKETS, THT TTODAY THE PLACE IS NAMED... AND IS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC. Would you say that somebody born before 1945 was born in Harare, Zmbabwe - or in Saliesbury Rhodesia?,Being fairly well versed in geography and particularly in the geography of Central Eurorpe, I have no problem with the place names,but GENI should respect historic facts. Dagmar Friedova

I put current Czech name with the German name in brackets, sometimes even the Hungarian, etc. name:

Example: Prostějov (Prossnitz), Moravia, Czech Republic OR Bratislava (Pressburg, Pozsony), Slovakia

Geni uses the Google API for place names, which means that it displays only the current name, not historic names. Of course, by coding in this way, it should in the future be possible to display historic place names. Funny that you would use the Czech names prior to 1918, since that was neither the official Habsburg name, nor the name used by the mostly German-speaking Jews, nor on any of the Jewish records (whether the original or the parish copies, most of which are in German only). Just goes to show you how subjective it all is. In any case, I would like to list the correctly spelled Czech name, along with the German name, for the towns I have identified on the project page. if any of you who are fluent in Czech want to edit the project page to correct the spelling of the Czech town names, please go ahead and do it for me. It will save me a lot of work.

The format I use - I borrowed from Wikipedia.
Jewishgen also only allows current City-Town names & their current countries.

Most of the time in archives we only find the German name - and I have to go to Wikipedia for the current Czech name & location - to find possible Surname matches on my old site & Geni :)

Even prior to 1918 Czech was one of the OFFICIAL LANGUAGES IN HE aUSRAIN APRTOF THE EMPIRE(THAT WAS not THE CASE IN sLOVAKIA, sLOVAKIA WAS NOT RECOGNIZED AS A COUNRY WITH A DIFFERENT NATONALITY (jEWS, CATLOLIC,PROTESTANT,gREEM-oRTOHODOC) -OFFICIALL THE COUNTRY AS SIMPLY CALLED uppoer hUNGARY. tHERE WERE ONLslovak RIy school and a sigle Slovakgrammar school. Inhe Austrian part there were notonlxmanygrammar schoolsand other typesofsecondaryy schools,but a Czech University nad a Czech Technical Uniersity. I am ready to correct the Czech names but couldyou send me the complete list of the names you need by e-mail?

Randy,I am ready ro correct the names of Czech, i.e. Bohemian and Moravian, towns and regions. But could you send me th list by e-mail? Thanks beforehand..

PS My apologies for the horrible typing mistakes! Horribile dictum! Unforgivable!

Another reason to use the contemporary (usually Gernan but not always) name exactly as given in the records, is that it is very easy to use Wikipedia or whatever and come out with the WRONG Czech name ( or even the wrong German name). This is a particular problem for little villages with maybe only one Jewish family which was quite common in rural Bohemia.

Although lists such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_exonyms_for_places_in_t... are very valuable they are very far from complete.

I certainly favour stating the country as Bohemia, or Moravia for records which were created when those countries existed. Easy to do by ignoring the automatic location finder and keying in the location manually. This also allows extra details, such as the House number.

Despite this there is an advantage in having "standardized" place names to allow systematic searching.

I see that on the Geni "Search" one can select Bohemia (though not Moravia) as a Location filter. Does anyone know whether this actually works, and if so exactly how ? When I tried it it seemed to pick up people for whom I could not see the place "Bohemia" listed on their profiles.

We have a good list of German/Czech town names at http://www.jewishgen.org/austriaczech/gemeinde.htm

The problem on Geni is picking the correct Czech town, because often there are several with the same name and it is not easy to figure out which was the one with the Jewish community.

Use "Ortsverzeichnis" from www.genteam.at. In Ortsvezeichnis you find not only translation in Czech but also the name of the neigboring village or town and the name of the old county (Bezirk).
In www.mapy.cz you then can check whether the place is really adjacent to neighboring village/town, and whether the place is close to the old district town.

Thanks Hanus. I had not tried the Ortsverzeichnis (Gazeteer in the English version) before. It is indeed very helpful.
As a test case, I tried Kamenicek, that I had recently found to be misinterpreted on a Geni Profile as Kamenice nad Lipou and is not on http://www.jewishgen.org/austriaczech/gemeinde.htm. The Gentream listing correctly gave the current name "Kamenicky", as well as the parish & area, which allowed exact identification , and as you say confirmation that it is in the right place, on mapy.cz.

I'd like to add some of the accepted Czech + German spellings for towns in the Beroun area, following the protocols suggested above. What is the editing process?
~Judith

Interesting factoid: I just tried entering - in geni - the German version of a town name and it offered the Czech version. Perhaps we could use this function to edit the list, assuming, of course, that geni's versions are correct.
Judith