Knez is Bohemian

I am Bohemian, not Czechoslovakian.

The Romans gave the name Bohemia to an area in Eastern Europe occupied by a Celtic tribe (the Boii) who were displaced by a race of people called Czechs in the first centuries of the Christian Era in that long sweep of migration and settlement generally referred to as the barbarian invasions.

Bohemia, apparently at times a kingdom and at others a principality, enjoyed a few centuries of independence here and there, but it was mostly in and out of the control of other empires, notably the Moravians, the Holy Roman Empire, and Austria-Hungary.

After the Habsburgs were defeated in World War I, their Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up and several new countries created out of it. What had once been Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia were amalgamated into the new nation of Czechoslovakia.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia, along with all the other Eastern European countries, fell under the influence of Communist Russia and remained under their control until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1993, the Czechs and Slovaks agreed to divide the country in two. Slovakia was reestablished, and that part of Czechoslovakia that had been Bohemia and Moravia was renamed the Czech Republic.

There are a number of places in the United States with significant populations of persons of Czech or Bohemian descent. Iowa and Wisconsin both have such enclaves, and so does Chicago. Many of these people refer to themselves as Czech or Czechoslovakian.

Czech can be thought of as an ethnicity and Bohemian as a nationality, so it is not necessarily incorrect to refer to me and my family as Czech. It is very incorrect, however, to call us Czechoslovakian since Czechoslovakia had not even been invented yet when my grandparents immigrated to the United States in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.

My family and their cronies in the Chicago area referred to themselves as Bohemians, called their language Bohemian, and named things for that place – my grandfather's Odd Fellows lodge was called Bohemia Loze (Bohemian Lodge), and he is buried at Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago.

Proud to be Bohemian, I am. I'm not Czechoslovakian.