Tomas G. Masaryk

T. G. Masaryk was the first president of Czechoslovakia.

The Czechs think he was Czech. He considered himself to be a half-Slovak. The fact is that his father was Slovak and always spoke Slovak language, and his mother was only half-Czech. The name Masaryk is definitely not of Czech origin. To the language he spoke, Masaryk referred as to Moravian Slovak, what most scholars would call Moravian dialect of Czech. However Masaryk correctly recognized that this dialect actually developed from the Old Slovak, not from Old Czech. Of course, for political and geographical reasons, nobody would admit it today in the Czech Republic...