What's in a name?

This is the first post to be published after the corona virus has spread through Europe and its pandemic has been declared. I wish all of you good health. Please follow the advice of medical experts and protect yourselves and your loved ones. Only together can we beat the virus in this difficult time. Stay safe!

Pat & Mat is a show famous all over the world. However, the official name of the series as it is today only came about after the series had already been sold to more than 40 countries. Here is a list of names of the show in different countries, taken from Wikipedia. Users from all over the world have amended it with titles from their respective countries.

Language(s)	Title(s)
Arabic	"زينغو و رينغو" (Zingo and Ringo)
Catalan	"En Pat i en Mat"
Croatian	"A je to! (I to je to!) Pat i Mat"
Danish	"Naboerne Per & Mads (The Neighbors Per & Mads)"
Dutch*	"Buurman en Buurman" (Neighbour and Neighbour), formerly "De twee stuntels" (The two klutzes)
English	"Pat and Mat"
Estonian	"Meistrimehed Pat ja Mat" (Handymen Pat and Mat)
Finnish	"Hupsis!, Pat ja Mat" (Oops!, Pat and Mat)
German	"… und fertig!" (... and that's it!), "Pat und Mat", "Peter und Paul", "Sepp und Heiri" (in Switzerland), "Mack und Macke (in DDR)
Hungarian	"Kétbalkezesek" (Fumblers) (literally "2 Left Handers"), Pat és Mat
Icelandic	"Klaufabárðarnir" (The clumsy guys)
Japanese	"パットとマット"
Korean	"패트와 매트"
Macedonian	"Пат и Мат"
Norwegian	"To gode naboer" (Two Good Neighbours)
Persian	"!همینه " (This is it!) also "پت و مت" (Pat & Mat)
Polish	"Sąsiedzi (The Neighbours), Pat i Mat"
Portuguese	"Zeca e Joca"
Romanian	"Asta e! Pat și Mat"
Russian	"Тяпа и Ляпа" (Tlyapa and Lyapa), "Пат и Мат", "Соседи" (Neighbours)
Slovenian	"A je to! Pat in Mat"
South-Africa	"Hans en Mans"
Spanish	"Los Chapuceros", "Pat y Mat"
Swedish	"Två snubbar (Two dudes)
Welsh	"Now a Ned"

The international titles can be divided into four groups: 1) ... a je to! and its translations (... und fertig!),  2) distinctive, native names for the two characters (Zingo & Ringo), 3) variations of Pat and Mat after 1989 and 4) usually one-word titles referring to both of the characters, mostly pointing out that they are neighbours (Sąsiedzi). Some of these are also combinations of one of the above, like the Dutch Buurman en Buurman.

This post is, however, primarily concerned with how the original names came to be in the first place.

As explained by his son Marek, the genesis of the handymen duo were comic strips by Lubomír Beneš published in local newspapers. They featured two characters named pan (Mr.) Ouholíček and pan Sedlec. The names were borrowed from two villages near Roztoky, where Beneš lived, Úholičky and Sedlec, which you can easily find on Google Maps these days. Unfortunately, no other details about these comic strips were ever put forward by Marek. We don't know what the characters looked like or where and when were the strips published.

In 1976, our heroes were truly born when Beneš and dramaturge Jiří Kubíček, who had worked together since 1974, were joined by cartoonist Vladimír Jiránek. In an interview, Beneš stated that he and Jiránek "locked themselves in the studio and drew and designed until they came to the look of the two figures". Below, you can see Marek Beneš holding the first page of the technical screenplay for the premiere short, Kuťáci. The cover reveals that its working title was Podařené dopoledne (A Nice Morning) and projected length 197 meters. You can see the names I previously mentioned, with additions next to them: Ouholíček became Červeňák (Red), while Sedlec became Žluťák (Yellow).

photo: ČT show Gejzír

What does Kuťáci even mean, you ask? Well, it's not that easy to explain. The official translation used in the 1990s was The Tinkers and it's mostly there. Kuťáci (pronounced coo-tyah-tsee for all you non-Czechs) is the plural form of the noun kuťák - notice the rhyming analogy to Žluťák and Červeňák; a common name for the two characters in Czech is also ajeťáci, derived from the name of the series I discuss down below. Kuťák in itself seems to be a bit of an obscure expression, as I couldn't find it in any Czech online dictionary, while it also appears as a surname. I've been informed by a Czech speaker that kuťák is, as I suspected, a colloquial term for handyman, obviously related to the formal designation kutil.

title

As we all know, the eventual series was not commissioned by the Czech TV in Prague, but rather the Slovak TV in Bratislava. Their first (of four) 7-episode order was carried out in 1979 and the name became a problem, as Slovaks, just like us today, did not understand what Kuťáci is supposed to mean. The crew then thought about a new, Slovak name and they eventually settled for ... a je to! (... and that's it!). This was a lovely, short name, fitting perfectly as it was identical in both Slovak and Czech. It was even adopted verbatim in (ex) Yugoslavia, even though our translation should be slightly different (... to je to!). Nowadays in this part of the world, the series is still much better known as A je to! than Pat & Mat, which prompted the Croatian TV channel RTL Kockica to chronologically regress all Pat & Mat title cards to A je to!. RTL, it should be mentioned, has a stupid tendency to alter all foreign title cards even though non-children shows in Croatia are always subtitled, not dubbed anyway.

a je to? in 2003?

Quite extraordinary, the Dutch have adopted a je to! as well, but not in the same way. When the two handymen do their usual handshake gestures at the end of an episode, they say the phrase out loud. People in the Netherlands aren't aware that the phrase actually isn't gibberish.

Let's go back to 1979. The series title was sorted out. But what about the characters' names? Well, nobody really cared about that. Internal documents show the characters were referred to as just K1 and K2, presumably short for kuťák or kutil. Below is a page from the technical screenplay (essentially a storyboard) from the 6th episode, Obraz, where you can see that. These documents are still kept by Marek Beneš and I would love to see them live one day!

ahaonline.cz 

In the episode Práčka (The Washing Machine) from 1983, Mat's mailbox is shown. Even though it's in miniature writing, we can see that the label simply says Kuťák.

It seems the primary inspiration to give the characters names came from children. As Marek Beneš writes, his father Lubomír was a guest or host of two children TV shows, Kouzelný svět obrázků (The Magic World of Pictures) and Abeceda animovaného filmu (Animated Film Alphabet), where he was asked: why are the characters nameless? Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any information about those shows. When production of the series resumed in 1989, the two were finally christened: Pat and Mat. This development was cleverly incorporated in the set design, with the handymen having their names (and shirt colors) spelt out on their front doors.

Of course, an important factor in the decision to name the characters was also the ever-growing international audience, which couldn't process the ... a je to! name. In fact, the six 1989-90 episodes were co-produced by Megatrend, a German company which didn't last much longer and eventually folded. Here is a quick history of the names by Lubomír Beneš:

The name Kuťáci is a Czechism, so it could not be translated into Slovak. When we started filming for the Slovak TV, we eventually came up with the title “… a je to!”. The audience then wrote to us asking why the characters did not have names. When preparing the next six episodes, this time for Krátký film, because the situation had changed, we named them Pat and Mat. We told ourselves that these would be universal names. They can be Patrik and Matyáš, Patlal and Matlal or pat and mat from chess.

How did the names Pat and Mat come about? Even though some sources cite the inspiration for them as coming from chess, Marek Beneš says Pat and Mat are actually shortened forms of Czech expressions Patlal and Matlal. These are not Czech personal names, however, but again expressions which are hard to translate. In an interview for a Croatian magazine, Beneš stated that the names can roughly be translated as Clumsy and Awkward. However, that's hopping between three languages, so let's look at the source, the Dictionary of Standard Czech Language. This time I'm luckier:

patlal, matlal lemmas

The almighty Google Translate says that matlal's definition would go something like this: someone who is confused about something, who ruins everything. It is, however, silent on patlal. Let's then have a look at the verbs which these two expressions were derived from:

patlat, matlat se

Patlat, among other things, means to do something carelessly and unprofessionally, rumble, thrash, dabble, talk stupidly, silly and incomprehensibly, but also do something with much effort, laboriously, slowly. Matlat se, a reflexive verb, means, among other things, to confuse yourself, but also poke in something sticky, perform something without any result. As such, Clumsy and Awkward is an adequate direct translation. A close observer will nevertheless notice that the two Czech dictionary entries link to one another and are not only phonetically, but semantically linked as well. I believe a great English alternative for these names would be something like Rumble and Tumble.

However, the alternatives and translations are completely irrelevant, as Pat and Mat are short, universal names adaptable to all corners of the world. Firstly aiF in the 1990s, and then Patmat film today have been trying to get other countries to adopt these names as well and have had some success. A question often arises: which one's pink Pat and which one's Mat? The studio have yet again subtly atrributed the names by incorporating the hats and colours into their logos:

© Patmat, Patmat film

A slight digression: the caps also have their names. Mat wears a beanie, known in Czech as a kulich, while Pat wears a type of beret called a rádiovka.

kulich (left), rádiovka (right)

The series name has taken a recursive turn in Iran, where پتو متو  (patu matu, lit. blankets and stuff) has become an expression denoting clumsiness and awkwardness. The only language that's still actively avoiding Pat & Mat as the name is Dutch, as the series has been dubbed in that language since the mid 1980s and the dub has its own rules. Both characters call each other Buurman, or Neighbor, so there's no verbal distinction between the two.

I would like to end this post where I started it, but on a more personal note: what are some of your  distinctive names for the characters? As they do not talk, people often made up their own names for the two handymen. My grandfather, who enjoyed watching the series with me, nicknamed them Meštri (the Experts - ironically, of course) and this is what got stuck in our household. What else could we call them? It was, as I have shown you, just our own version of Kuťáci. In the rest of the country, Majstori (and Mojstri in Slovenian) is also something that can be heard. Some people in Croatia, and I've witnessed this more than once, believe the characters are called Lolek and Bolek. Those two are, naturally, a completly different Polish drawn pair of friends. I believe the confusion arose due to the fact that Lolek and Bolek were also broadcast in Croatia, but were much less popular. 

I would like to hear some of your unique names in the comments below.