Ethnic Czechs were called Bohemians in English until the early 20th century,[17] referring to the former name of their country, Bohemia, which in turn was adapted from the late Iron Age tribe of Celtic Boii.

During the Migration Period, West Slavic tribes settled in the area, "assimilated the remaining Celtic and Germanic populations",[citation needed] and formed a principality in the 9th century, which was initially part of Great Moravia, in form of Duchy of Bohemia and later Kingdom of Bohemia, the predecessors of the modern republic.

[18] The West Slavic tribe of Czechs settled in the area of Bohemia during the migration period, and assimilated the remaining Celtic and Germanic populations.

The exact etymology of Čech is uncertain, with most common derivation relating it to the root čel- (member of the people, kinsman).

In their Y-DNA haplogroups, which are inherited along the male line, Czechs have shown a mix of Eastern and Western European traits.

[33][34] A mtDNA study of 179 individuals from Western Bohemia showed that 3% had East Eurasian lineages that perhaps entered the gene pool through admixture with Central Asian nomadic tribes in the early Middle Ages.

[19] Slavs settled in Bohemia, Moravia and Austria sometime during the 6th or 7th centuries,[40] and "assimilated the remaining Celtic and Germanic populations".

Czech patriotic authors tend to call the following period, from 1620 to 1648 until the late 18th century, the "Dark Age".

The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was followed by a wave of emigration, unseen before and stopped shortly after in 1969 (estimate: 70,000 immediately, 300,000 in total),[50] typically of highly qualified people.

[54] The Luxembourg dynasty represents the heights of Czech (Bohemian) statehood territorial and influence as well as advancement in many areas of human endeavors.

One of the most notable figures are founders of Czechoslovakia, modern state of independence of Czech and Slovak nations, Presidents Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, who was also leader of exile government in World War II.

Ludvík Svoboda was a head of the Czechoslovak military units on the Eastern Front during the World War II (later president of Czechoslovakia).

Jan Palach committed self-immolation as a political protest against the end of the Prague Spring resulting from the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies.

[61] Another Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic were conservative politicians such as Mirek Topolánek, Petr Nečas and social democratic such as Vladimír Špidla, Jiří Paroubek, Bohuslav Sobotka.

This tradition determined the development of Czech music and has remained the main sign in the works of great Czech composers of almost all eras – Jan Dismas Zelenka and Josef Mysliveček in Baroque, Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák in Romanticism, Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů and Josef Suk in modern classical or Petr Eben and Miloslav Kabeláč in contemporary classical music.

Jan Václav Antonín Stamic in 18th-century contributed to the creation of Classicism in music[67] by innovations of compositional forms and the founding of the Mannheim school.

Karel Slavíček was a Jesuit missionary, scientist and sinologist who was introduced to the Kangxi Emperor on 3 February 1717, in Beijing.

Czech performer qualified for the grand final for the first time in 2016 when singer Gabriela Gunčíková finished in 25th place.

From contemporary Czech writers can be mentioned Jáchym Topol, Patrik Ouředník, Michal Viewegh or Daniela Hodrová.

Film director Miloš Forman, known best for his movie, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is of Czech origin and started his career in Czechoslovakia.

The influential surrealist filmmaker and animator Jan Švankmajer was born in Prague and has resided in the Czech Republic throughout his life.

In the field of animation and puppet film famous people include Zdeněk Miler, Karel Zeman and Jiří Trnka.

Actors Zdeněk Svěrák, Vlastimil Brodský,[74] Vladimír Menšík,[75] Libuše Šafránková or Karel Roden have also made a mark in modern Czech history.

After the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia many other models succeeded: Karolína Kurková, Eva Herzigová, Taťána Kuchařová, Petra Němcová and Daniela Peštová.

[80] Although not a Christian, rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, a 16th Century scholar and one of the most influential figures of Jewish history, is considered to be part of the country's religious legacy as well.

Definition by territory is still discussed alternative,[83][84] from time to time is indicated for Czechs number of natives (speaking mostly German, English or otherwise) – these include US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, film director Karel Reisz, actor Herbert Lom, the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, the founder of genetics Gregor Mendel, logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel, the philosopher Edmund Husserl, scientists Gerty Cori, Carl Cori and Peter Grünberg (all Nobel Prize winners) and Ernst Mach, economists Joseph Schumpeter and Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, philosophers Bernard Bolzano, Ernest Gellner, Vilém Flusser and Herbert Feigl, Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky, astronomer Johann Palisa, legal theorist Hans Kelsen, inventors Alois Senefelder and Viktor Kaplan, automotive designer Ferdinand Porsche, psychologist Max Wertheimer, a geologist Karl von Terzaghi, musicologists Eduard Hanslick and Guido Adler, chemist Johann Josef Loschmidt, biologists Heinrich Wilhelm Schott and Georg Joseph Kamel, the founder of the dermatology Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, peace activist Bertha von Suttner (Nobel Peace Prize), the composers Gustav Mahler, Heinrich Biber, Viktor Ullmann, Ervin Schulhoff, Pavel Haas, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Ralph Benatzky, writers Franz Kafka, Reiner Maria Rilke, Max Brod, Karl Kraus, Franz Werfel, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Leo Perutz, Tom Stoppard and Egon Erwin Kisch, painters Anton Raphael Mengs and Emil Orlik, architects Adolf Loos, Peter Parler, Josef Hoffmann, Jan Santini Aichel and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer, cellist David Popper, violist Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, pianists Alice Herz-Sommer and Rudolf Serkin, president of Austria Karl Renner, Prime Minister of Poland Jerzy Buzek, industrialist Oskar Schindler, or chess player Wilhelm Steinitz.

People with Czech ancestry include the astronauts Eugene Cernan and Jim Lovell, film directors Chris Columbus and Jim Jarmusch, swimmer Katie Ledecky, politicians John Forbes Kerry and Caspar Weinberger, chemist and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Cech, physicist Karl Guthe Jansky, economist Friedrich Hayek, painters Jan Matejko, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, actors Ashton Kutcher, Sissy Spacek and Kim Novak, tennis players Richard Krajicek, Jakob Hlasek and Stan Wawrinka, singer Jason Mraz, Brazil president Juscelino Kubitschek, founder of McDonald's company Ray Kroc, writers Georg Trakl and Robert Musil, mayor of Chicago Anton Cermak and Ivanka Trump and her brother Donald Trump Jr.

Bohemian Estates' defeat in the Battle of White Mountain brought radical religious changes and started a series of intense actions taken by the Habsburgs in order to bring the Czech population back to the Roman Catholic Church.

All kinds of Protestant communities including the various branches of Hussites, Lutherans and Reformed were either expelled, killed, or converted to Catholicism.

As of 2015, Pew Research Center found in that 72% of the population of Czech Republic declared to be irreligious, a category which includes atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as "nothing in particular", 26% were Christians (vast majority Catholics),[14] while 2% belonged to other faiths.