FOREIGN EXCHANGE

Being a Czech mate can cause women pain and suffix*

Their society and the very language have an 'ova-reaction'* to eliminating last names' feminine endings

By Henry Chu — Los Angeles Times — June 26, 2009
Reporting from Prague, Czech Republic -- Lucie Kundra is something of a feminist rebel -- not because she wouldn't take her husband's name when they got married last year, but because she did.

She adopted his surname exactly as it was, and in doing so defied centuries of tradition and the wishes of her own mother. That's because she refused to add the customary feminine suffix "ova" at the end, as the Czech language normally dictates; she answers to Lucie Kundra, not Lucie Kundrova.

The three letters were a step too far for the 27-year-old charity worker.

"I really didn't want 'ova' because [it means] you are owned by your husband," Kundra says. "Language is a huge part of culture and socialization, and if we want to change relations between women and men and promote equal opportunities, this is something we have to deal with."

Though still a small minority, more and more young Czech women are grappling with that question as women make further inroads in Czech society and inch closer to parity with men.

But it's a tough row to hoe when the entire structure of the Czech language is stacked against you, when deviating from the linguistic norm can not only raise eyebrows but even get you fired. Self-expression still has its limits here in a country that was under the thumb of Soviet totalitarianism until 20 years ago.

Linguistically speaking, the vast majority of Czech women spend their entire lives belonging to one man or another.

They're born with their dads' surnames, plus "ova" at the end; tennis champion Martina Navratilova, for example, is the stepdaughter of Miroslav Navratil. Then, after marriage, when a woman takes her spouse's last name, with the usual addition, she switches "allegiance" from father to husband.

But the sexism of the language only starts there. Czech is a complex, towering edifice built on declensions, changes made to a noun depending on which "case" it is, whether subject, object and so forth. It's like conjugating a verb correctly to match the subject. When speaking about a woman, all the declensions of her name are based on her having a feminine version of it to begin with.

So when the "ova" is missing, it becomes difficult to speak about her naturally.

"It violates the main principle of the Czech language," says Sarka Blazkova (husband's name: Blazek), who works at the state-funded Institute for the Czech Language.

Attaching a feminine ending to a woman's name is not peculiar to Czech, Blazkova points out. It's common in other Slavic tongues, including Russian, in which women add an "a" to their surnames.

Outside their own countries, the practice can lead to annoying mix-ups. Immigration officers sometimes fail to grasp that a man and woman are actually married because their names aren't exactly the same. One Czech couple, trying to check in to a hotel in Turkey, nearly had to sleep in separate rooms when the conservative proprietor refused at first to believe they were legally wed.

Inside the Czech Republic, the confusion goes the other way. People make Lucie Kundra repeat her name, or ask whether she's married to a foreigner. When she explains that she and her husband are both Czech, some interlocutors demand point-blank why she chose not to conform to accepted style.

That, and the initial displeasure of her mother, who had advised her against thumbing her nose at tradition (she's come around now), has been the only negative consequence thus far for Kundra.

Not so for Zuzana Kocumova, an Olympic cross-country skier who found out just what some segments of Czech society would and wouldn't tolerate.

As a sometime TV sports commentator, Kocumova refused to add "ova" to the names of foreign skiers. It wasn't out of feminist principles necessarily, but rather because she thought it ridiculous to "Czech-ify" the names of non-Czech women, as is standard procedure here. (The U.S. secretary of State is always referred to as Hillary Clintonova, the chancellor of Germany as Angela Merkelova and she of erratic pop-star behavior as Britney Spearsova.)

Being personally acquainted with foreign skiers made Kocumova all the more determined to refer to them by their names exactly as given.

"These are their names in the start lists and results lists everywhere," Kocumova said. "It was unnatural for me to use the Czech form. I couldn't do it."

During the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in February, held near Prague, the Czech capital, some viewers wrote in to complain about Kocumova's refusal to append "ova" to female skiers' names during her commentary. She was unmoved, and kept doing it her way.

The television station fired her.**

Steamed, Kocumova took her story to the press, prompting enough of an outcry over her dismissal that, barely a day later, the station took her back. In an English-language opinion piece, a Czech media website dubbed the TV station's treatment of Kocumova an "ova-reaction."*

That was a sign that attitudes might be shifting a bit, at least with regard to the habit of forcing foreign women's names to fit the Czech mold.

Abandoning the convention for the names of Czech women, however, will require a far bigger shake-up of both language and mentality.

Nevertheless, some feminists dream of a day when women here will be able to identify themselves however they please, with gender-specific suffixes a relic of a less enlightened past.

Ova and out.*  
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* Humor, puns:
  • "Czech mate" sounds like "checkmate", in chess
  • "suffix" is similar to "suffer"
  • "ova-reaction" is sounds like "over reaction"
  • "ova and out" is sounds like to "Over and out", a radio voice procedure.
**  Lidové noviny, Czech Republic, February 27, 2009

Layoff for “sloppy language”

Zuzana Kocumová, a Czech cross-country skier who competed in several international contests, has been banned as a commentator at the Nordic World Ski Championship in Liberec for refusing to attach the suffix "-ova" to names of foreign female athletes, as is customary in the Czech language. The conservative daily Lidové noviny comments: "We can praise our language for its flexibility and we assiduously lengthen and decline names, but that doesn't help us at all on the Internet, on Google for example, because there there's no '-ova' suffix. De facto we already use two languages (one day-to-day, another in the Internet). The purism being propagated so passionately here is simply funny to watch. ... The purists may not like it, but all Kocumová did was to reflect this reality. In ten years we'll no doubt laugh over this struggle against putatively sloppy language.

As printed in The Arizona Republic — June 28, 2009, Page A19

Some note sexism in 'ova' suffix

More Czech women consider surname without the 3 letters

by Henry Chu — Jun. 28, 2009 — Los Angeles Times

PRAGUE, Czech Republic – Lucie Kundra is something of a feminist rebel – not because she wouldn't take her husband's name when they got married in 2008, but because she did.

She adopted his surname exactly as it was and in doing so defied centuries of tradition and the wishes of her own mother. That's because she refused to add the customary feminine suffix "ova" to the end of her husband's name, as the Czech language normally dictates; she answers to Lucie Kundra, not Lucie Kundrova.

The three letters were a step too far for the 27-year-old charity worker.

"I really didn't want 'ova,' because (it means) you are owned by your husband," Kundra says. "Language is a huge part of culture and socialization, and if we want to change relations between women and men and promote equal opportunities, this is something we have to deal with."

Though still a small minority, more and more young Czech women are grappling with that question as women make further inroads in Czech society and inch closer to parity with men.

But it's a tough row to hoe when the entire structure of the Czech language is stacked against you, when deviating from the linguistic norm not only can raise eyebrows but even get you fired. Self-expression still has its limits here in a country that was under the thumb of Soviet totalitarianism until 20 years ago.

Linguistically speaking, the vast majority of Czech women spend their entire lives belonging to one man or another.

They're born with their dads' surnames, plus "ova" at the end; tennis champion Martina Navratilova, for example, is the stepdaughter of Miroslav Navratil. Then, after marriage, when a woman takes her spouse's last name with the usual ending, she switches "allegiance" from father to husband.

But the sexism of the language only starts there. Czech is a complex, towering edifice built on declensions, changes made to a noun depending on which "case" it is, whether subject, object and so forth. It's like conjugating a verb correctly to match the subject. When speaking about a woman, all the declensions of her name are based on her having a feminine version of it to begin with.

So when the "ova" is missing, it becomes difficult to speak about her naturally.

[Removed]

Outside their own countries, the practice can lead to annoying mix-ups. Immigration officers sometimes fail to grasp that a man and woman are actually married since their names aren't exactly the same. Inside the Czech Republic, the confusion goes the other way. People make Lucie Kundra repeat her name or ask if she's married to a foreigner.

When she explains that she and her husband are both Czech, some interlocutors demand why she chose not to conform to accepted style.

That, and the initial displeasure of her mother, who had advised her against thumbing her nose at tradition (she's come around now), has been the only negative consequence thus far for Kundra.

Not so for Zuzana Kocumova, an Olympic cross-country skier who found out just what some segments of Czech society would and wouldn't tolerate.

As a sometime TV sports commentator, Kocumova refused to add "ova" to the names of foreign skiers.

It wasn't out of feminist principles necessarily but rather because she thought it ridiculous to "Czech-ify" the names of non-Czech women, as is standard procedure here.

[Removed]

The television station fired her.

[Removed]
MORE

Magazine (Czech radio show), By Daniela Lazarová,
Radio Praha, Feb. 21, 2004.

As the Czech Republic prepares to join the EU in May of this year [2004] and more Czechs will avail themselves of the opportunity to live and work abroad there is growing pressure on the authorities to enable women to scrap the -ova suffix to their names. According to current legislation Czech women have to have this suffix in their documents even if they are married to a foreigner. "I get tired of explaining to people why my name is different from my husbands and sons," one of the petitioners complained. "I am tired of explaining that I am not Russian," said another. " The -ova suffix immediately brands me as a foreigner from the east and this damages my work opportunities in some firms" says a third. The series of complaints is endless. And the main argument is - why should the state dictate my name? Here's how one Czech woman feels about it:

"I find it extremely discriminatory. You probably know the history of this suffix. Basically what it meant in the past was that the woman belonged to somebody: first to her father and later to her husband. Although it is not really perceived as such any more we still feel that women should have a choice: either to take it or to refuse it. I also believe that a name is a very important part of a person's identity and they shouldn't be forced to take a name or a certain form of a name if they do not like it. I don't understand why it is such a problem, why stereotypes and let us say conservativeness should play such an important role in this. Obviously one of the problems is that the people who are sitting in Parliament are mainly men and this problem doesn't really bother them."

You yourself have an American boyfriend, I understand?
"Yes, I do."

So this may concern you at some point in the future...
"Obviously I have thought about it and I do have a problem with it because if I want to change my name it would not only be because of my future husband but because of my children. If I have a baby boy my name would be different from that of my child. It may not be perceived so in the Czech Republic but if you go abroad this can present problems. There are actually some funny stories going around — for example if a Czech couple — a married couple goes to China they cannot be accommodated in the same hotel because as the Chinese see it -they have different names in their passports. So there is the practical aspect to consider as well."

Although this particular battle has been fought for long now, parliament deputies are finally ready to take action. They will be debating the issue within a matter of days and there are indications that the proposed amendment will win approval, allowing Czech women who are married to foreigners or living abroad to scrap the ova suffix to their names.

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