STREET NAMES IN YUGOSLAVIA

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 84, 7 January 1928, Page 23

STREET NAMES IN YUGOSLAVIA

4. AN IRONIC COMMENTARY ON HISTORY. The names of the streets of a town are a lively commentary on history, and more notable still are the changes through which they go. The principal town of Croatia, once known to the world under its old Austrian name of Agra m—the change to Zagreb, the Slavonic name, marked the formation of the new kingdom—has numerous streets which have retained names given them in Austrian days. These, nearly ten years after Zagreb became a Slavonic town, are now to Ire changed, and Royal consent has been obtained for affixing the names of members of the Serbian Royal families to important i thoroughfares and squares (writes the I correspondent of the “Observer”). In this respect the names of the Belgrade streets might be said to ’>e an ironic commentary. Before the war, as anyone may see who possesses an old Baedeker or Petit Bleu Guide, there were four streets parallel to each other named respectively Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Prague Streets. In the days when it suited Serbian policy to persuade the Slavs of Austria that Serbia supported their national aspirations, the names of the chief towns of Slovenia and Croatia (now in this country), and of Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia) were given to streets. It seemed n lit tie unnecessary Io have a Belgrade SI reel in Belgrade, yet Serbian logic demanded if, and the remarkable thing is that it is the only one left! Now. presumably. Serbia feels that since site has got the coveted provinces.

their chief towns need not be flattered — and instead the streets are called after the Dawn and the Brothers Nezic, Serbian patriots of the old days. The renaming of streets m former Hungarian towns is proving a tiresome task; it has be?n done thoroughly by the authorities, but is boycotted by the inhabitants, and this makes a stranger’s movements in the town very difficult. One does not need to go so far as Subotica (Szabadka). on the Hungarian frontier, to find this. In Pantchevo, on the other side of the Danube, a town visible from Belgrade, the visitor will find, to his annoyance, that the local inhabitants are, or pretend to be, ignorant of the now name, even of the street in which they live—and caution prevents them from telling you the old.