The Genealogy of the Sudas

2003 CZECH REPUBLIC TOUR/SUDA REUNION

Finally posted! View a photojournal, featured images, family portraits and other documentation pertaining to our genealogical tours of Pohnání, Tábor, Malšice, Čenkov, Zhoř, Lom, Maršov, Pišek, Bechyně, and Veselí, as well as the festival and Suda family reunion with our Bohemian cousins that took place in July 2003.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The name Suda apparently comes from sud, the Czech word for barrel. In medieval Europe, if you were a serf, you took your name from what your lord did (brewer, smith, etc.). The English equivalent of Suda would be Cooper; the Germanic equivalent would be Böttcher/Böttcherin, Fassbinder/Fassbinderin (southern German/Austrian), Küfer/Küferin (southern German/Swiss), or perhaps Fass, Fassel/Fassl or Fässer.

PETER SUDA, KNIGHT

Czech nationalist and historian Franz Palacký's history of Bohemia contains references to Peter Suda, a 16th-century knight. Palacký's book was published in German and Czech; I'm in the process of obtaining the relevant pages from the German version and translating them into English to post here. They're printed in the old German typeface, which is difficult to read, so I'm first transcribing them into a modern typeface. Here's what I have so far:

• Geschichte von Böhmen, Volume 5, Part 2, Pages 420-429 (1867), old typeface
  [Caution: this is a very large (9.5 MB) PDF file. Not recommended for download on a dial-up.]
• Geschichte von Böhmen, Volume 5, Part 2, Pages 420-429 (1867), modern typeface [66 KB Word file]
• The bibliographic citation for the source is: Palacký, Franz. Geschichte von Böhmen: Größtentheils nach Urkunden und Handschriften. Fünfter Band: Das Zeitalter der Jagelloniden. Zweite Abtheilung: König Wladislaw II und König Ludwig I. Von 1500 bis 1526. In Commission bei Friedrich Tempsky: Prag, 1867.
• You can also take a look at the castle in Renz where Peter Suda lived and worked.

More to come.

BOHEMIA'S SHORES

Bohemia is landlocked now, of course; it's a province in what is currently known as the Czech Republic in Eastern Europe. But in Shakespeare's time it stretched south to Trieste on the Mediterranean coast — hence the reference to "the shores of Bohemia" in A Winter's Tale.

The Czech people have a mixture of Slavic and Celtic heritage. The Celts were there first; the name Bohemia is a derivation of the name of the Bojen (German), a Celtic tribe that settled there in the fourth century B.C. (In Latin, Bohemia was Boiohemum; in German, Böheim: home of the Bojen). The same tribe was in northern Italy at around the same time and lent its name to the city of Bologna (Latin Bojonia). See Palacký, Vol. 5, Part 2 at 19-21.

In 17th-century France, the word bohemian was probably used as a catch-all term for Eastern European gypsies. See, for example, Radio Prague's article "The History of the Roma in the Czech Republic." In modern English it commonly denotes a gypsy in a broader sense, as this entry from the Oxford English Dictionary indicates:

3. A gipsy of society; one who either cuts himself off, or is by his habits cut off, from society for which he is otherwise fitted; especially an artist, literary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or irregular life, not being particular as to the society he frequents, and despising conventionalities generally. (Used with considerable latitude, with or without reference to morals.)

1848 THACKERAY Van. Fair lxiv, She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and circumstances. 1862 Westm. Rev. July & Oct. 32-33 The term 'Bohemian' has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gipsey, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits...A Bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art. 1865 Cornh. Mag. Feb. 241 There are many blackguards who are Bohemians, but it does not at all follow that every Bohemian is a blackguard. 1875 EMERSON Lett. & Soc. Aims x. 256 In persons open to the suspicion of irregular and immoral living, in Bohemians.

SEDIVY SITE

Visit Peggy Nielsen's web site on the Sedivy family genealogy. The site features an electronic version of her book on the Czechs of Walsh County, North Dakota that has information about many families in addition to the Sedivys, including the Sudas, Lovciks, Tupas, Spales, Votavas and others. She also has links to online genealogy resources.