Getting to the Bottom of Bohemian

Hello,

Earlier this month I explored the Gypsy influenced roots of the word flamenco, and now I’m paddling in similar waters with the history of bohemian. The word is used now to describe a person, especially an artist, who lives a free life with little regard for social conventions. It is also use to describe a free-flowing colourful personal style.

Who or what was Bohemia? The geographers will tell you that Bohemia was a country between 1918 and 1939 and again from 1945-1992. Since 1993 the land known as Bohemia has been incorporated in the Czech Republic, the central and western areas of it to be precise.

How did it reach English as a way to describe artistic lifestyles? It arrived in 1848 from bohemién in French where it was a term to describe either a person from Bohemia or a Gypsy. In Middle English, however, they already had a word for a native of Bohemia, it was Bemener.

The French had been using bohemién as a word for a Gypsy since the 1400s but it was a mistake. The Roma people originated in India, not the Czech Republic. They arrived in Europe via that region and it’s possible they were confused with the Bohemian Hussite heretics (early protestants whose leader, Jan Hus, was burned at the stake in 1415) who were driven out of Bohemia around the same time.

You don’t have to live in a yurt to be bohemian, but it might help

By the 1800s the idea of bohemians living a life outside of conventional society and dressing in a colourful way had transferred from the Roma people to the artistic community in France and was popularised via stories by Henri Murger in “Scenes de la Vie de Boheme” (scenes from the Bohemian life), helped inspire Puccini’s famous opera “La Bohème“), and is explained in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” which helped cement the term’s use in English.

The origins of the word bohemian has a surprisingly military root considering the modern use for artistic types. It was first used for a central European kingdom in the mid 1400s thanks to the French word Boheme but came from Latin Boiohaemum (a name used by Tacitus) and drawn from a Celtic people, the Boii, who settled the area. It translates literally as warriors. Joining Boii to haimaz (Proto Germanic word for home) gives us Boiohaemum (home of the warriors). It’s hard to see a bohemian enclave these days as being a home of warriors. Words change, sometimes to a remarkable degree.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace