Clapp, Hawthorne or Howren, Sitwith, Perkins, Paxon and Sheridan respectively. A Pachta, who evidently knew a little Greek, first merely exchanged an x for the ch, but wound up as Paxton. One immigrant who had assumed Fixa intended thereby to “fix up” (spraviti) an original Spravil, but did not altogether get rid of foreign appearances. Doubtless he will drop the a when he learns that there are Americans named Fix. A Sixta, suspected by his Bohemian-American neighbors of having been a Šiška, explained that originally his name was Šesták. The sibilant Sis, recently brought to my attention, certainly must have replaced something like Šiška or Žižka. It is about as euphonious!
A practical and popular method for effecting convenient nominal Americanization is the exact or approximate translation into English of a Bohemian surname that exsits also as a substantive or an adjective: e. g., Miláček—Darling; Zlatý—Golden. For this purpose a Bohemian-English dictionary discloses almost unlimited possibilities, and advantage has been taken of them accordingly. Trojan being translatable by the English Trojan, suffers only a change of pronunciation, and the same word serves as a substitute for the diminutive Trojánek as well. This last, however, has been further Americanized as Troy. Gardiner supplanted an ancient Zahradník; Root, Kořínek, and Fox, Lišák or Liška. Chrastil, translating the verb chrastiti, to rustle, hit upon Russell, Šedivý appears not only as Gray, but also as Brown (or, in the German form, Braun), owing to the fact that colloquially many Czechs say šedivý instead of hnědy for brown. Císař, before the war, was more frequently Germanized as Kaiser; since then, Caesar has appeared, but more recently Keyser (pronounced Keezer) has been adopted as having some advantage over the indisputably foreign, Latin rendition. Růžek or Ružek, depending on whether it is understood as a derivative of růže (rose) or as a diminutive of roh (horn), becomes either Rose or Horne. Křička (an outcry) becomes Cryer or Krier. A Doubek (diminutive of dub, oak), whose ideas of orthography were more German than English, attempted to translate his name by Auch.
This, being promptly pronounced by Americans like the interjection ouch! was abandoned for Dobey, as they had been pronouncing his original name. There are Bohemians named Oakes, who were, in all probability, Doubeks. Bukáček, taken as a diminutive of buk, is, of course, rendered Beech. One Šafránek now spells his name Shafranck. This evidently gives the newspapers as much trouble as the original; an enterprising reporter got it printed as Sunnafranck. Other Šafráneks (or
