This article deals with naming practices among the Czechs who lived in the first half of 20th century in two Bulgarian villages - Vojvodovo and Belinci. It is based on fieldwork carried out among the people who migrated in 1950 from Bulgaria and settled in several towns and villages in South Moravia (region of Mikulov and Valtice), and their descendants. Naming practices of the Bulgarian Czechs are analyzed in relation to naming strategies of the Bulgarians in the given period, and it is argued that the role that was fulfilled by surnames among the Czechs was fulfilled by first names among the Bulgarians. Relationship between the naming strategies and ideas about kinship and gender are discussed further.
The text describes the history of the first Czech village in Bulgaria – Sesek. It is the first attempt to present systematically all known information about this village scattered in publications, unpublished materials and archives. One of the main purposes of the study is to prove that “Sesek” was de iure as well as de facto standard village inhabited by (primarily though not exclusively) Czech families – migrants from the Czech village Svatá Helena in Rumanian Banat, not just a “place” these went through on their way to later founded Vojvodovo (usually presumed to be the only Bulgarian Czech village).
In the tradition of imagology, as it was elaborated in the works of V. Todorov and Z. Urban, the author presents an image of the Czech community living in a village of Vojvodovo in Bulgaria from the beginning of the 20th century till 1950, as it was seen through the eyes of their neighbors. As a source the author uses published texts as well as unpublished memoirs dealing with Vojvodovo, and testimonies gathered during his fieldwork in Vojvodovo in a period 1997–2009. Derived from the mentioned sources, the final image of the Czechs in Vojvodovo is very positive. It presents them as a noticeably united group of puritans, who were industrious in an exemplary manner, primarily peasants, nevertheless very good traders, neat and culturally advanced, honest and willing, which made them good neighbors, except the fact that they were not very hospital to strangers.