I have noticed that Czech names are very flexible... in addition to the standard declensions, Czechs often use different versions of each others names that indicate something about the relationship between the two people. So a close friend might call someone by a different name than their business associate and their girlfriend or wife might use another name altogether. My question is what would the possiblities be for someone named David? What would a very close (best) friend likely call him? How about his wife? His mom? Thanks in advance, David
These are mostly diminutives. For David it's Davídek. Wife/girlfriend/mom could call him that. Friends would call him probably David. David - Davídek - Davídeček - but the last one is probably too much - maybe for "begging" Like: Davídečku, kup mi to... prosím, prosím... Some names have more possibilities/levels for diminutives.
There are diminutives - a lot of them end in -ek or -ka - and double diminutives, like something you'd call a 3-year-old. A lot of those end in -eček or -ečka. At least for the ones of Slavic origin, you can make diminutives with either of the two elements, so for example Miroslav could be Mirek, Mireček, Slavek or Slaveček. There might be acute accents on the a's in Slavek and Slaveček, but I'm not entirely sure. For people who don't know each other well, you call them by the full form of the name. When you're better acquainted with one another, you might use a diminutive like Mirek. I'm not sure how double diminutives are used outside Russia, but I think they're reserved for people you're really close to, on affectionate terms with, etc. Or, as it was said in the post above, you could be begging... Hope this helps.
