Thousands of Czechs have signed a petition calling for streets on Prague's Rohan Island, which shares its name with The Lord of the Rings, to be named after characters from the fantasy film.
The island on the Vltava River, just north of Prague's historic centre, is named after local bourgeois Josef Rohan, which matches the name given by John Ronald Ruel Tolkien to one of the kingdoms of his saga.
Prague City Hall has announced a plan to name new streets in the area after philosophers including Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl or Jacques Derrida.
But more than 10,000 people who signed an online petition demanded that the new street names reflect the ambiguity of the island's name rather.
"Rohan Beach should be named after Rohan!" the petition demanded.
"What did Immanuel Kant do to help in the war against Saruman's hordes?" they said, referring to the evil wizard of the novel.
"Where was Husserl when Westfold fell?" they asked.
The petitioners also want a street named after Tolkien's shieldmaiden Eowyn to "address the legitimate complaint" that none of the new streets will bear a female name.
Sharing the petition on his Facebook page, Prague Pirate Party councillor and former mayor Zdenek Hryb hailed the initiative as a "commendable step".
Czechs are known for their passion for fiction - at the time of the 2021 census, more than 21,000 of the 10.5 million Czechs had registered as Jedi, the guardians of peace and justice in the Star Wars saga. / BGNES
