# All Slavic languages: Colloquial names of towns



## ilocas2

Hello, I'm interested if you use in your language some slang names for towns and cities in your country. They are usually shorter than original names. They are used mostly by people living in that town or nearby and they are not known all over the country.

Some from Czech:

Varnsdorf - Vanďák
Mladá Boleslav - Bolka
Rakovník - Rakáč
Litoměřice - Liťák
Strakonice - Straky
Nepomuk - Nepál
Jindřichův Hradec - Jindřicháč
Havlíčkův Brod - Havlbrod
Valašské Meziříčí - Valmez
Olomouc - Olmík


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## Duya

It is not common in former Yugoslavia. About the only such name I can recall is _Begeš_ for _Beograd_, but that is pretty rare and may be local to Vojvodina. Naturally, two-term names are shortened to single term (_Stara Pazova -> Pazova_), but that's it.


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## bibax

Praha - Prágl (from German Pragel, Prágl/Pragel is also a common surname);
Bratislava - Blava;

In fact, Pragel and Blava are somewhere else and they are not cities.

Olomouc is often called Olmec (do not confuse it with the Olmec civilisation in Mexico ).


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## bibax

Saint Petersburg - *Питер* (it is well known outside Russia: Pitěr, Piter, Pityer, ...);


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## TriglavNationalPark

Duya said:


> It is not common in former Yugoslavia. About the only such name I can recall is _Begeš_ for _Beograd_, but that is pretty rare and may be local to Vojvodina. Naturally, two-term names are shortened to single term (_Stara Pazova -> Pazova_), but that's it.



I'm not sure about BCS, but in Slovenian, such short forms can come from the first, "adjectival" word of a two-word place name (*Kranjska Gora* *->* *Kranjska*), the second word (*Nova Gorica -> Gorica*) or, in some cases, either one (*Murska Sobota -> Sobota* or *Murska*).


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## DenisBiH

For Sarajevo there is _Rajvosa._ Sometimes also _šeher/Šeher _is used, either alone or in combination with something else.

Rajvosa Motorcycle Club
Olimpijski duh i dalje živi u Šeheru


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## Tassos

DenisBiH said:


> For Sarajevo there is _Rajvosa._



Isn't that Šatrovački slang?
I mean, this is not something special, theoretically it could be implemented to every town name?


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## DenisBiH

Tassos said:


> Isn't that Šatrovački slang?
> I mean, this is not something special, theoretically it could be implemented to every town name?



It could, theoretically, but I don't think that it is. _Rajvosa _is the only widespread example that I know of and it can appear in conversations that don't use any other _šatrovački_. Perhaps you could view it as a "_šatrovizam_" that has gained wider circulation.


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## Tassos

You're right, the only other examples I can find (in Wikipedia) are

*Munze* (for Zemun, Serbia) and
*Kblo* (for Blok, meaning a block in New Belgrade)


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## DenisBiH

Ah yes, there is also a third term for Sarajevo - _Teheran _(Tehran). It is used disparagingly, mostly by some Serbs and Croats.


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## Kartof

For Стара Загора (Stara Zagora) you have "Zara" or "Zagra" which you can see in the graffiti but it's rarely used with anyone except maybe teenagers and football fans in spoken language.


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## osemnais

There is Maina Town - Майна Таун - for Пловдив, because the inhabitants of this city are famous for the (over)use of the word майна.


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## Azori

In Slovak:

Bratislava - Blava (as already mentioned by bibax)
Budapešť - Pešť

I can't think of any other right now. Place names consisting of two or more words do get shortened (e.g. Banská Bystrica -> Bystrica). Other than that, using district codes (which are used also on car plates in Slovakia) instead of names of towns is quite common, however, they seem to be used only in informal communication and more in the written form than the spoken one. When used this way, they seem to denote only the town from which the code derives, thus BA stands for Bratislava, KE for Košice and so on. One could then see, for example:

"Zajtra idem do NR." instead of "Zajtra idem do Nitry." = "I'm going to Nitra tomorrow."


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## Anicetus

Dubrovnik is called only _Grad_ ("the City") by residents of its region, but that's more of a local tradition than a colloquialism.


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## Encolpius

Azori said:


> ...Place names consisting of two or more words do get shortened (e.g. Banská Bystrica -> Bystrica)....



There are more names consisting of two/three names, is there a rule how to shorten those names??? 

What I've found quickly: 

Liptovský Mikuláš > ?? (so you say "do Mikuláša")
Považská Bystrica > (Bystrica is not possible, right?)
Dunajská Streda >
Rimavská Sobota >
Žiar nad Hronom
and maybe many other...


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## Thomas1

A thread of interest: Abbreviations of place names.


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## vianie

Encolpius said:


> There are more names consisting of two/three names, is there a rule how to shorten those names???
> 
> What I've found quickly:
> 
> Liptovský Mikuláš > ?? (so you say "do Mikuláša")
> Považská Bystrica > (Bystrica is not possible, right?)
> Dunajská Streda >
> Rimavská Sobota >
> Žiar nad Hronom
> and maybe many other...



   Very simplifiedly speaking, people in the west of SR prefer to use adjectives (išiel som cez Považskú) and people in the central part nouns (idem do Bystrice). This is just my youngster days detection, I wasn't being experienced about this shortening anymore later on. I don't even have enough experiences how do the people in the east like to shorten these.


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## marco_2

My home town in Poland (Wrocław) is very often called _Wrocek. _Besides, I heard several times that people shorten the names of _Zielona Góra _and _Jelenia Góra _(e.g. _Jadę do Zielonej. Byłem w Jeleniej._). But apart of this I can't remember any other shortened names or slang names for our cities and towns - maybe they exist regionally.


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## Thomas1

In my neck of the woods, there is also 'Wawa' for 'Warszawa'.


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## Azori

Encolpius said:


> There are more names consisting of two/three names, is there a rule how to shorten those names???
> 
> What I've found quickly:
> 
> Liptovský Mikuláš > ?? (so you say "do Mikuláša")
> Považská Bystrica > (Bystrica is not possible, right?)
> Dunajská Streda >
> Rimavská Sobota >
> Žiar nad Hronom
> and maybe many other...


I don't think there is any rule, surely you can abbreviate Považská Bystrica to Bystrica and Liptovský Mikuláš to Mikuláš if people you talk to know which town/village is talked about - I think this holds true especially if you live there. There's not really much need to use only the full name of the place in question. The name of the town I grew up in, for instance, consists of two words - an adjective and a noun, and what's more, not far from that town there's also a village with almost the same name - only the adjective differs. Despite that, we (me and the other people in the town) commonly used only the noun to refer to our town. No confusion at all in that. To refer to the village we would use its full name. And if somebody asked me where I'm from I'd use the full name of the town.


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## itreius

Just like Dubrovnik is called _Grad_ by residents of its surroundings, Zagreb tends to be called that way by people in Zagreb's surroundings. The abbreviation _ZG_ (ze-ge) is also quite common.

There's not much else left in terms of abbreviating Zagreb. As far as nicknames are concerned, there's _Zabreg_ and _Beli Zagreb grad_. The latter being quite a mouthful means it's rarely used, you'll mostly find it in songs or literature. There's also _Purgerija / Purgeraj_ (accent on the last syllable), which comes from _purger_ (German _Bürger_).

Some additional examples of shortened forms, usually they're foreign or simply too irrelevant and/or too general for people outside each of the town's region

_Velika Gorica_ > _Gorica_
_Sveti Ivan Zelina_ > _Zelina_
_Varaždinske Toplice_ > _Varaždinske_
_Gornja/Donja Stubica_ > _Stubica_


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## DenisBiH

itreius said:


> There's not much else left in terms of abbreviating Zagreb. As far as nicknames are concerned, there's _Zabreg_ and _Beli Zagreb grad_.



Is _Zabreg _pronounced _Cabreg _sometimes? My mother went to high school and _viša škola_ there, and that's how she sometimes jokingly refers to it.


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## Jeki

Duya said:


> About the only such name I can recall is _Begeš_ for _Beograd_, but that is pretty rare and may be local to Vojvodina.



So interesting, I didn't know Belgrade is called like that. I heard for Bege (from BG), that's all.


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## itreius

DenisBiH said:


> Is _Zabreg _pronounced _Cabreg _sometimes? My mother went to high school and _viša škola_ there, and that's how she sometimes jokingly refers to it.



I've heard the _C_abreg variant a couple of times. It's usually in the context of either imitating Germans or making fun of the wannabe-Germanness (is that even a word?) of older Zagreb folk. However, I can't see the latter using it themselves.

Oh and for god's sake, I can't believe I actually left out _Agram_. Agram, the German name for Zagreb, is quite a common nickname.


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## bibax

In Czech it is also possible to hear German names of some cities, e.g.

Liberec - Reichenberg
Ústí - Aussig
České Budějovice - Budvajz
Bratislava - Prešpurk


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## ilocas2

itreius said:


> _Zabreg_



There's town in Moravia Zábřeh and I heard people from that region to shorten it to _Zábr_

The most extreme case are for example _Lib_ for _Liberec_ or _Lovo_ for _Lovosice_ but this is quite tasteless already, in my opinion.


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