It’s interesting the opposite way, too. For the Czech translations of the Harry Potter books, for instance, the author is given as “J. K. Rowlingova”. See here for a picture of a cover:
As noted above, this is a common practice in many Slavic languages. For example, Martina Navratilova (who is Czech) was the step-daughter of Miroslav Navratil.
Ironic since the whole reason she used initials in the first place was to disguse her gender.
Because those names were famous. It’s like a movie actor of the 30s changing his name to become know; they nearly always kept their stage name.
Actually, it’s “J. K. Rowlingová”–note the acute accent.
Indeed. Rowlingova is the feminine form of Rowlingův, which means “Rowling’s”, eg Rowlingova kniha, Rowling’s book. This is a possessive adjective which is the same form as Russian names ending in -ov/-ev as well as -in/-yn. Because they are not normal adjectives, feminine forms of those Russian names get -a; for the names that are like normal adjectives, (ie the ones that end in -yj or -ij, the feminine becomes -aya (or possibly -yaya). So Putin, Putina, Medvedev, Medvedeva, Trotskyj, Trotskaya. In the Czech case, the masculine last names are mostly nouns, and are declined as such, whereas the feminine names are adjectives and follow adjectival declension. Some men’s names are adjectival, such as Krátký; here, there is no special need for adjectivization by adding ová, the adjective just takes the appropriate feminine ending á and becomes Krátká. Some names are undeclinable because they come in the form of a genitive plural, such as Bártů. These names don’t change. Other names are adjectival in form but don’t have a separate feminine form, because they end in -í, such as Kočí.
The Czechs do this for all foreign names, including the Russian ones, which means that when they talk about someone called ‘Sharapova’, it becomes “Šarapovová”, because it is the feminine form of Sharapov. Foreign names that end in an i sound, like perry or St-Exupéry, are treated as adjectives.