Open a Vienna telephone book and you will find a surprising number of names that look Czech. There is a well-known idea in Austria, sometimes called the telephone book topos, that the city’s history of migration is best preserved in the surnames of its people. Linguist Agnes Kim examined it in a 2021 article on Czech family names in Vienna, which looks at how common these names are and how they were adapted into German. This guide explains what Slavic surnames in Austria tell you, how they were respelled and how to follow the family to the place it came from.
Why so many Slavic names in Vienna
Vienna was the capital of a multinational empire, and for centuries workers, craftsmen and merchants moved there from the Bohemian lands, meaning Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia. Kim’s article describes this migration as central to the city’s history. A large share of Viennese in the nineteenth century had been born in the Bohemian lands or had parents who were, and many of them were assimilated into German within a generation or two. Their names stayed. That is why a Viennese family with a Czech-looking surname usually has its older records in a Bohemian or Moravian parish, which today lies in the Czech Republic.
The Vienna History Wiki notes that the region’s surname stock includes names derived from Slavic personal names, especially Czech, Slovak and South Slavic, and Czech names for animals, birds and colours, such as Holub (dove), Kohout (rooster) and Černy (black). It also lists regional names that mark an origin, such as Böhm, Pollak, Unger and Krainer. See the wiki entry for the full list.
How names were respelled
When Czech speakers moved into German-language records, their names were respelled to fit German writing. The Czech letters č, š and ž have no direct German equivalents, so clerks used combinations such as tsch, sch or cz, or dropped the accent entirely. The same name could thus appear in Czech and German forms in different records, and the title of one of Kim’s studies, Dr. Dworschak und Mr. Švárc, plays on the contrast between a German-looking and a Czech-looking spelling. Examples that researchers often meet include the following.
| Czech form | Common German-style forms | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Dvořák | Dworschak, Dvorak, Dworak | The accent and the ř often disappear |
| Svoboda | Swoboda | v and w are interchangeable |
| Novák | Nowak, Novak | Also a Polish form |
| Černý | Czerny, Cerny | The accent is dropped or the first letter respelled |
| Němec | Nemetz, Niemetz | The ending adapts to German |
These are examples of patterns, not a guarantee for your family. Read the original entry and compare several records to see how your family’s own name was written.
Women and feminine endings
Czech surnames change for women. The wife or daughter of a man named Novák is Nováková, and the daughter of a Dvořák is Dvořáková. In German-language records the ending may be dropped, kept or respelled. Our post on women and maiden names covers this, and the spelling variants guide explains how to search for it.
Hungarian and other names
Hungarian names appear mostly in the east. Burgenland belonged to Hungary until 1921, so its older records are part of the Hungarian system and may be in Hungarian archives, as the archives guide notes. Slovene names are common in Carinthia and Styria, and the wiki mentions Korošec for a Slovenian Carinthian. Polish names appear in Vienna as well, and Pollak is a regional name that marks a Polish origin. In each case, the key move is the same: identify the place the name came from and then find the records of that place.
A worked example
Invented example: An invented Viennese family called Swoboda appears in 1890s residence cards, with the father born in a village in southern Moravia. The cards give the village and a birth year. The Catholic marriage entry in Vienna names the groom’s parents as Swoboda, but the baptism of the groom is in a Moravian parish, where the name is written Svoboda. A researcher searching Austrian sources for the German spelling would never find the earlier generations. A researcher who recognises the Czech form and searches the Moravian parish books, where they have been digitised by the Czech regional archives, would. This is a made-up case, but it follows the common route.
Place names have two forms too
The towns your ancestors came from usually had a German name and a Czech, Hungarian or Slovene one, and records used whichever the clerk preferred. A man born in a town recorded in German in his Vienna papers may be listed under the local-language name in the home archives, and a modern map may show a third form. Before you search abroad, write down both names of the place and check which one the local parish books use. The same applies to the district, since the empire’s administrative units were renamed and redrawn after 1918.
Why the name may not match the language spoken
A Czech surname does not prove that a family spoke Czech at home. Many families in Vienna and the Austrian provinces were German-speaking for generations while keeping a name of Slavic origin, and some Slavic-looking names are German names that were respelled. Kim’s article makes exactly this point about the assumptions people draw from a name: its etymology and its spelling both prompt guesses about a bearer’s origin and degree of assimilation, and those guesses are often wrong. Use the name to find a place, then let the records of that place describe the family.
Practical steps
- Find the place of origin first. A residence card, a military sheet or a marriage entry will often name it.
- Search both spellings. Try the German form and the Czech form, with and without accents.
- Check the feminine form. Women may be recorded with a different ending.
- Use Vienna residence files. Our Vienna guide explains how they point to a birthplace.
- Follow the family across the border. The older records may be in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary or Slovenia, with their own archives and rules.
Where to go next
For the general method, read the surname origins guide and the Austrian genealogy guide. If a DNA match has a Czech or Slovak surname, our DNA overview explains what that can and cannot show.
Spelling and records vary by period and by region, so check each step against the entries in your own family’s documents. For the scholarly background, Agnes Kim’s article is available through the Charles University repository.
