Jiri

Jiri or Jiri ( Czech. Jiří ) - Czech personal name, the form of the name George , similar to Russian Yuri , Egor , Slovak Juraj and Polish Jerzy .

The most common male name in the Czech Republic . According to statistics, in the 20th century it was most popular in 1952-1956, when an average of about 6,400 newborns a year received such a name (in just 5 years - 32,037 children). Since the 1980s, its use has declined (for 2010-2014, 4821 boys were named by this name in the Czech Republic); Nevertheless, it retains the 1st place with 301,629 carriers in the country at the beginning of 2015 - almost 3% (every 35th) oftotal population ^{[2] [3]} .

Like in Russian and some other Slavic cultures, Czechs also use other forms of the name "George", however, the use of even the most popular of them - - is inferior to Jiri by more than two orders of magnitude ^{[2] [4]} .

It has at least several dozens of derivative / diminutive forms, including Ira, Irzh, Irzhik, Irzhin, Irzhinek, Irzhichek, Irzhishta, Irka, Iroush, etc., as well as common forms with Jura, Jura, Yurka, Jurashek , Yurechek, etc. ^{[1] [5]}

The name has the female equivalent of Iřina ( Czech. Jiřina ).

One of the famous historical carriers of the name is the first non-Catholic king of the Czech Republic, Jiří from Podebrad (reigned in 1458–1471). In addition, the “Jiri” form is also traditionally used in the Czech Republic for the throne naming of British and Greek monarchs with equivalent national forms of names (cf. a similar Russian tradition, calling them all Georgs ^[6] ).

Jiri’s name day is celebrated on April 23 (corresponding to the common Christian memorial day of St. George ; compare the Orthodox St. George’s Day on the same date of the Julian calendar), or shifted a day later on April 24, due to coincidence with the day of Adalbert of Prague (St. Wojtech) ^[7] .