The name “Czech emerald” originates from the times of rule of the emperor Rudolf II. and it was coined by his royal doctor and biologist (1609).
The scientific world came to know moldavites on 2 December 1786 at a meeting of The Royal Czech Society of Sciences. Professor Josef Mayer gave a lecture in which he mentioned chrysolites found in the vicinity of the town of Tyn nad Vltavou. In the 18th century it was customary to call all transparent/translucent yellow-green stones chrysolites.
Later, names such as pseudochrysolites, obsidians, empyrodox quartz came into use. Another popular name, “Bouteillenstein”, came from German and it was based on the resemblance with green bottle glass.
In 1836 the custodian of mineralogical collections of the now National Museum in Prague, Franz Xaver Maxmilian Zippe, used the name moldavite for the very first time. He derived the name from the German word for the river Vltava – “die Moldau”, as the first moldavites had been found its sediments.
The Czech name “vltavin” was first used during the Jubilee Land Exibition in Prague in 1891.
