BOHEMIAN STYLE

I noticed on my trip to West Bohemia that there was a bit of confusion regarding the names of places. Most had two… and they were both impossible to pronounce.

The term “Bohemian” often causes a bit of head-scratching.

These days, it’s shorthand for the free-spirited, unconventional types — artists, poets, writers, dreamers, and those who refuse to be shackled to the humdrum and ordinary. In short, anyone allergic to the prosaic. But despite the name, it’s got almost nothing to do with the actual Bohemian region of the Czech Republic.

The word itself was first tossed around in 19th-century France, where it was applied to the starving-artist set living in the cheap quarters of Paris — the very same districts home to Romani people. The French thought the Romani had arrived via Bohemia (that’s western Czech Republic today). Spoiler: they hadn’t. The Romani had no connection to the place whatsoever.

Now, Bohemia was the old name for the Czech lands, taken from the Latin Boiohaemum. That means “Home of the Boii” — a Celtic tribe from the late Iron Age. (Not, as I first misread it, “Home of the Boil.” That would have been a very different tourism campaign.)

The name “Czech” itself comes from “Czechian,” the older designation for the land. And so, somewhere between Parisian artists, mistaken geography, and ancient Celts, “Bohemian” was reborn as a lifestyle rather than a nationality.