Name Days

Today was Alex's "name day" so we threw him a little party. Basically it included making a Thomas the Tank Engine cake and letting him stay up kinda late. I'm not sure when it started, but for sure during communist times each day of the year was assigned and name (came in male and female form) and if you had a baby, you could only choose from that list of 365 names for your child. Then, the child also gets to celebrate the day that bears their name, and it's a celebration similar to a birthday. Now people are allowed to name kids things that are not on the list, but all names must be approved by the court, and according to Henk, names are denied "more often than you would ever guess" was the way he put it. Ivana is the most popular name in Bulgaria (also very popular here) and the "Ivana day" is something like January 8th I think, and Ivana said since the name was so popular it was almost like a national holiday there!

I have also discovered that "proper" Czech is much different from spoken Czech. Czech like you would learn in a book is the official way and is used in writing, or when addressing someone important or giving a speech to a large crowd, etc., but the common conversations use a slightly different version of the language. For example, dejuki means thank you, but in common conversation they say dejuku instead. Sadly because of this a few of the words I had learned are much more difficult to actually understand during conversations.