Slovak Matters: What's in a (sur)name?

Slovak Matters: What's in a (sur)name?

Mobster names don't always fit.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.

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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.

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