Mobster names don't always fit.
Not many people who were around Bratislava in the fall of 1997 will ever forget the shooting of Košice mob boss Róbert Holub. Wounded in a murder attempt at the Hotel Danube September 24, he was shot dead two weeks later in his hospital bed by an assassin who had used an aluminium ladder to climb on the roof of Bratislava's Kramáre hospital. The killer fired 24 bullets from a machine gun at point-blank range.
Somehow, though, the grisly story loses some of its criminal glow when you find out the dead man's name translates into English as 'Bob Pigeon'. Or Bob Dove. Whichever sounds tougher.Somehow, though, the grisly story loses some of its criminal glow when you find out the dead man's name translates into English as 'Bob Pigeon'. Or Bob Dove. Whichever sounds tougher.
Or take the Bratislava underworld figure shot just four months before Holub - Miroslav Sýkora. His name meant 'Miroslav Titmouse'.
It's no wonder, given their unimposing real names, that Slovak mafia guys are so found of nicknames (prezývky). The man who shot Bob Pigeon was nicknamed (prezývaný) 'Whisky'. The fellow who allegedly profited from the underworld shuffle sparked by the departures of the Pigeon and the Titmouse called himself 'Gorilla'.
Not all of them get it right, of course - Peter Steinhubel, who called himself Žaluď (meaning acorn, but can refer to the shape at the end of a penis, thus the nickname is similar to the frankly vulgar English term 'dick-head'), was gunned down in 1999 outside his frozen food business. Perhaps a tougher sobriquet might have saved him.
Most Slovaks, however, simply live with the names they were given. We have several entries for Tupý and Tupá in the phone book (dense, dull-witted) nestled alongside all the Múdry (clever) listings; dozens of Smutný's (sad) to correct the giddy impression given by the Štastný (happy, lucky) brothers of NHL fame.
