The Civic Initiative Czechia

The "Civic Initiative Czechia" (Občanská iniciativa Česko / Czechia) was formed in Brno in October 1997 as a platform to help spread, insitutionalize and practically adopt Czechia, the geographic one-word name of the Czech Republic, that has been ignored by Czech official institutions, contrary to directions of the Czech foreign ministry in its memorandum (1993). Another reason for the founding of CIC was the fear, that the name Čechy (Bohemia) should be adopted as a synonym of the name Česká republika (Czech Republic), which was an imminent danger at that time. The main arguments of the civic initiative consist in geographical, etymological, linguistic and historical evidence of correctness and necessity in the common usage of the name Czechia, as a standard equivalent to the conventional name of the country.

The founders were professor Rudolf Šrámek, PhD., an established Czech linguist and researcher in the field of onomastics, teaching at the Department of Czech Language at Masaryk University, and Karel Kopřiva, at that time deputy mayor of Brno district Židenice. The civic initiative brings together not only experts in geography, etymology and linguistics, but also other activists with above mentioned interests. The members organize conferences on this theme, they are authors of numerous articles in specialized literature and the press, continuously address official institutions of the state and communicate with politicians, international trade commissions, industry and culture officials, schools, media and sports organizations.

In anglophone countries, active supporters of the name Czechia and The Czech Civic Initiative can also be found, who, actively use the name; e.g., Mr. Geoffrey Piper, the chief of The Music Enterprise Agency, based in Luxembourg, an important supporter and promoter of Czech music, wrote in response to the letter of the civic initiave in 2004: "I have used "Czechia" for several years and have recommended it... also in the message to the "British Dvořák Society" - the most important society for Czech music outside Czechia and Slovakia."