philologist, who asserted that the term comes from “slovo” which signifies “word” or “those who know words.” The term in the original Slavic is “Slovan” which is more closely allied in appearance and sound to the word from which it is derived. Dobrovsky claimed that the earliest ancestors of the present Slavs called themselves “Slované” or “men who knew words or languages” in contradistinction to the Germans who did not know their words or language and hence were called “Němci” from “Němý” meaning “dumb.” The Slavic name for Germans, oddly enough, has remained “Němci” or “the dumb ones” to this day. This dubbing of a neighbor nation which is dissimilar in language and customs recalls the practice of the ancient Greeks who named all other nations who were not Greeks “barbarians.”
The name “Czech” or “Čech” as it is correctly written, should by all rights be the only title applied to the group of Slavic people occupying the 22,000 square miles in what was Northern Austria. It is a word originally designating the leader of the small band of Slavs who, in the fifth century, emigrating from Western Russia, settled in the valley of the Vltava (Moldau) in the heart of Europe and there have remained as the sturdy vanguard of the Slav people. General Fadejév well said in 1869 “Without Bohemia the Slav cause is forever lost; it is the head, the advance guard, of all Slavs.” From the word “Čech” is derived the poetic name “Čechia” for Bohemia, this term corresponding to our symbolic “Columbia” for America.
The names “Bohemia” and “Bohemians” as applied to the country and to this group of Slavs respectively, are derived from the word “Boji,” or “Boii,” a Celtic tribe, occupying the basin of the Vltava and the Elbe
