Lutovsky Project

Spotlight on John (Jan) Lutovsky (Junior)-  The Father of Generation 0 Part 1 of 2 John Lutovsky with his Granddaughter Carmelle @1931 Side Note: Just for clarity, I am calling John Lutovsky, Father of Generation 0, a Junior because technically he was. His Father was also named Jan, and since neither had a middle name, they are technically Junior and Senior. I'm going to write about his Father Jan's marriage coming up so I wanted to have a way to distinguish between which Jan I am speaking about. I've been so curious since I started researching family history why John Lutovsky left Bohemia...and how he left Bohemia. Did he know someone here in the US? How did he end up in North Dakota? Unfortunately, these are all questions which no document or certificate will answer. I am having to rely on word of mouth, which so far hasn't been too successful. Unfortunately, the older generation who might have known some of these answers, have passed on. However, I keep plugging away...

 The Nam e Game - Part 3 of 3 I'm sure everyone is thinking by n ow, "are you kidding? This dude has more to say about names?" And believe it or not, yes! When I started this research I never had any idea t hat names could be this complicated. Who knew?  In many language s or cultures (Slavic c ountries and also in Greece)  there is a surname version for the boys vs. the girls...like Lutovský for boys and Lutov ská for girls. Also, in many languag es we see many names which refer to a child being the son or daughter of a particular individual. Johnson is one of the most common surnames I'm sure everyone is familiar with. Johnson means son of John. Or in Ireland we see a lot of O'Connor, which means the same thing, "Son or Daughter of Connor." In the Czech language, if the root of a surname is not the name of a town or village like Lutovsky, and is a noun or a man's first name, then a boy's surname would remain as is, and the girls' would get...

The Name Game - Part 2 of 3 The Czech language had always been influenced (although some may say "encroached" upon) by both the German and Latin languages, and each language had their own version of names. It's not uncommon to find old Czech documents or certificates written in either Latin or German. And just as a reminder, Bohemia was ruled by the German speaking Habsburg Monarchy in Austria for over 300 years from 1526 to 1848. Because of the different languages used in Czech records, it's common to see variations of names. I have noticed that people seemed to interchange the different languages' version of names pretty regularly. The changing of names was really throwing me when I first started doing research. I couldn't understand who all these people were, until I realized that they were all the same people, just using different versions of their names. A perfect example is my Grandfather Wenceslaus. As far as I know, his name given at birth was Wencesla...

 The Name Game - Part 1 of 3 I wanted to talk a little bit about the naming traditions of children in the Czech Republic. I was kind of shocked when I recently found out that people in the Czech Republic are not free to name their children anything they would like. So, it's not possible to name a child Hot Dog Lutovsky. There is a list of "government" approved names, (and I'm just guessing here, but probably Potato Headska isn't on the list either) which you must select from .  Czech Potato Headskas I put the word "government" in quotes because even though the government does manage this, the government wasn't the one who started this tradition, Catholicism was. Now, the process is automated and there is a website you can check to make sure the name you have selected is approved. Below is the website if anyone is interested...and if you can read Czech. https://www.kdejsme.cz/ Initially, I thought this was odd, that you must select a preapproved name ...