Female surnames

Czech language, as other Slavic languages, has its specialities which are not too easy to understand to people who are not used to this kind of languages. One of these specialities are female surnames. I promised to write an article about them...

Czech female surnames are derived from the male form of the surname. English or German speaking countries are using the same form for both males and females, but Slavic languages are different.

Most common change is simply adding -ová to the end of male form of the surname. This is used in case when the surname ends with a consonant. Here are some examples:

Novák - Nováková

Dvořák - Dvořáková

Peták - Petáková

Famfulík - Famfulíková

If the surname ends with the vowel -a, the vowel is eliminated and -ová is added. Examples follow:

Rybička - Rybičková

Humpola - Humpolová

Liška - Lišková

Růžička - Růžičková

There are also surnames ending with -e and they behave quite randomly:

• they may eliminate the -e (Kaše - Kašová)
• they may depend on a family preference (Skočdopole - Skočdopolová/Skočdopole)
• or they may even preserve the -e esp. in non-Czech surnames (Šebrle - Šebrleová/Šebrlová).
  

The last case where -ová is used is elimination of the vowel -e- if the surname ends with -ek or -el: -e is eliminated and -ová is added. It's quite complicated to explain, but the examples show it quite well:

Janáček - Janáčková

Pekárek - Pekárková

Nosek - Nosková

Pavel - Pavlová

Kozel - Kozlová

Another example is the case when the surname ends with the vowel -ý. This vowel is replaced by the female form ending with -á. So:

Krátký - Krátká

Černý - Černá

Bezruký - Bezruká

Toužimský - Toužimská

You can see one more case in those registries which are written in German. There is usually -in added to the male version to express that the person is female. Here are examples:

Kout - Koutin

Čermák - Čermákin

Svoboda - Svobodin

 

There are also surnames that should remain the same in male and female versions (Krejčí, Petrů etc.), but even they are sometimes used according to the previous rules, esp. in older times.

 

You can also very rarely encounter a surname that may add letters into the root of the surname (or during declension) instead of removing it or changing it: these are surnames like Hrabě-Hrabětová, Dítě-Dítětová, Poupě-Poupětová, etc.