Most frequent family names in Slovakia

[Martin]

What puzzles me is that all these surnames are well known and frequently used Hungarian surnames as well.

It is partly comparable to Scottish and Irish names being often spelled in English rather than in Gaelic. The Slovaks and Hungarians lived in the same kingdom, and its authorities recorded the non-Hungarian names (Slovak, Romanian, Rusyn...) in the Hungarian spelling system with increasing frequency especially during the decades before its collapse, along with the Habsburg monarchy, in 1918 and pressured the non-Hungarian majority of the kingdom to switch to Hungarian names. Like the Slovak-Americans who keep their Anglicized names, some Slovaks did not change the spelling of their last names back to Slovak after the creation of Czecho-Slovakia. What also influences the frequency of the last names in Slovakia is the presence of about a 9% Hungarian minority, an estimated 7% Romani (Gypsy) minority plus Rusyns, Germans, Poles and their Slovak descendants.

But things with the frequency of the last names are more complex than the Scottish or Irish situation and the minorities.

These names are all Hungarian in origin

They are not. In 2003, the most frequent last names in Slovakia were:

• Horváth, Kováč, Varga, Tóth, Nagy, Baláž, Szabó, Molnár, Balog, Lukáč.

Hungarian borrowed Horváth, "Croat," from the Croatians' name for themselves, Hrvat. Kováč (Kovács in Hungarian spelling) is an ancient Slovak, Slavic and Indo-European word for "blacksmith" (the root kov- in it is related to the English hew) that Hungarian borrowed. Molnár is borrowed from the ancient Slovak, Slavic and Indo-European word for "miller" (the nomadic Ugric, later Hungarian, herders did not have millers and blacksmiths when they arrived in Central Europe around 900 CE).

Hungarian derived Tóth from Teuton/Deutsch, first probably in the sense of a "speaker of a language other than Hungarian," whose meaning was then limited to the speakers of Slavic and eventually just the Slovaks. Baláž and Lukáč are from the Latin (Greek, Hebrew) first names Blasius and Lucas (Luke in English).

Only Varga ("cobbler"), Nagy ("large"), and Szabó ("tailor") are original Hungarian words. Balog may have two origins – from the Old Slovak and Slavic place-name blg, based on "marsh," and the Hungarian bal, "left," as a reference to a left-handed person.

The way Slovak has modified last names with little change to the original meaning plays a key role in the frequency of the Hungarianized and Hungarian versions of last names in Slovakia.

• When last names were being standardized in the kingdom several hundred years ago, there was only one option to adopt, for instance, one's profession of a miller as a last name in Hungarian – Molnár.
• The main Slovak option was Mlynár, but both from the start and in order to differentiate families with the same name in one village later, the Slovaks also used name variations like Mlynarčík, Mlynarovič, Mlynárik, Mlynský, Mlynka, Mlynkovič and others, all based on "miller."

It would be necessary to identify and add up all the variations (and spellings) of a name derived from the same profession, ethnic group (e.g., "German" resulted in Nemec, Nemčík, Nemčovič and others), or attribute in order to get a frequency comparable to that of the last name Molnár among the Hungarian last names or Miller among the English last names.

[htcstech]

Thanks Martin.
In a similar thread on S-R, I pointed out that the frequency of the Horvat(h) name in both Hungary and Slovakia suggests that the name is too numerous to have Croat origins. Why so many?
I have a few ideas about this, but I'm not sure how valid they are, assuming that the name was attributed between the 16th and 18th centuries:
1. That Horvat became a generic description of southern Slavs, not just Croats and population and military movement spread the name.
2. Ottoman tax (defter) collectors/administrators used the name to identify Slavs in general, keeping in mind that many of the support personnel were not Turks.
3. Named by Hungarians in error. There is a certain interchangeability between Toth and Horvath. Toth suggests Transylvanian origin.

Something like Jozsef Blaskovics list of names derived from Ottoman defters (Prague 1984) could be a nice snapshot on this. Do you know if anyone has or is working on putting these names in a database?

Peter M.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Slovak Spot" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to slovak-spot...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to slova...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/slovak-spot?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Vilo]

Martin, Very interesting response.  I have had reason to look for details concerning  last names.  Most recently, I found an article concerning Croatians in Slovakia:http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/croslov.html .   Moet American Slovaks have not studied our history and do not know of the number of different peoples who left their marks in Slovakia. 
 Z Bohom,
Vilo

[htcstech]

Vilo!
What a good site on Croatian history. Thank you. There is a link there to explain why there were so many Horvath names but unfortunately the link is dead.
Peter M.

[Martin]

the frequency of the Horvat(h) name in both Hungary and Slovakia suggests that the name is too numerous to have Croat origins. Why so many?

All of the kingdom was the Croats' as well as the Slovaks' home, just like all of the U.S. is the home of the Pennsylvanians, Texans, as well as Californians. There are tons of Pennsylvanians and Texans in California. Then and now, people move where jobs are and safety from war during the relevant periods of the kingdom's history.

1. Vilo linked info on the waves of tens of thousands of Croats running to the safety of what's now western Hungary and south-western Slovakia from the Turks.
2. Another tens of thousands of Slovaks and Croats moved to what's now Hungary, substantially depopulated then, after the Turks had been pushed out of the "low territories" by the end of the 17th century.
3. Yet another massive numbers of Slovaks and Croats moved to Budapest and other "lowland" towns, mostly ethnically German then, during their boom in the 19th century. For instance, the large, celebrated church in Deák Square in the center of Budapest, had services almost exclusively in Slovak (Hungarian once every 3 months) in the first half of the 19th century.

Horvat became a generic description of southern Slavs

In casual communication among some Hungarians (just like quite a few not particularly alert people used to use "Russian" for anyone from the Soviet Union), but improbable in bureaucratic documentation (see below).

Named by Hungarians in error.

There may have been instances of ethnic ignorance when the law to put an end to fluctuations in people's last names took effect, but they're unlikely to have had anything to do with – not that frequent either – heedless or malicious naming (e.g., after unglamorous animals, vegetables). People were very much aware of who they were ethnically, any instances when someone telling a Habsburg official loud and clear he was, say, a Serb or a Bulgarian would have been assigned the last name "Croat" could have taken place only under obscure scenarios, with bizarre motivations. The people with the last names meaning "Slovak" (Tóth) and "Croat" (Horváth) are a legacy of their massive historical migrations within their kingdom, as is the large number of originally Slovak and Croatian names in modern Hungary (as well as Austria).

Toth suggests Transylvanian origin.

No. Its early documented meaning in Hungarian was a "Slav," then it reduced its meaning to a label for just those Slavs who derived their name from the ethnic word Slovan ("Slav"), i.e., the Slovaks, Slovenians, and Slavonians (not the Croats, Serbs), and eventually it referred almost exclusively to the Slovaks (not to other "northern" Slavs from the Hungarians' perspective, the Rusyns, Poles, Czechs).

[Martin]

To round it off, here are the most frequent last names in today's Hungary and their meanings and origin:

1. Nagy – see above, "large," but typically "tall" in naming; Hungarian origin
   
2. Kovács – see above, from the Slovak, Croatian kováč, "blacksmith"
3. Tóth – see above, "Slovak," sometimes "Slovene," "Slavonian," or another Slav; from the German Teuton
4. Szabó – see above, "tailor"; Hungarian origin
5. Horváth – see above, from the Croatian Hrvat, "Croat"
6. Kis – "small"; Hungarian origin
7. Varga – see above, "leather worker, cobbler, (saddler)"; Hungarian origin
   
8. Molnár – see above, from the Slovak, Croatian mlynár, "miller"
   
9. Németh – from the Slovak, Croatian Nemec, Njemac, "German"
10. Farkas – "wolf"; Hungarian origin
11. Papp – from the Rusyn, Old Romanian pop, "Eastern-rite cleric," in turn from the Greek papa, "father"
    
12. Balog – see above, from the Hungarian bal, "left," or Old Slavic blg, "marsh," or both
13. Takács – from the Slovak, Croatian tkáč, "weaver"
14. Juhász – "shepherd"; Hungarian origin
15. Mészáros – from the Slovak, Croatian mäsiar, mesar, "butcher"

It was one country, the Slovaks, Hungarians, Croats, Rusyns, part of the Romanians, Germans, Serbs, Roma (Gypsies), all subjects to the same Crown of St. Stephen, moved about their homeland, and the linguistic mixture of the family names in the kingdom's descendant countries, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, parts of Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, shows that.

[James Dubelko]

That's really well-argued/stated, Martin.  Thank you.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Slovak Spot" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to slovak-spot...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to slova...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/slovak-spot?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Jim Dubelko
6051 Sandpiper Lane
North Olmsted, OH  44070
cell: 440-829-8801
home: 440-734-7858

[Martin]

Thank you, Jim.

Here's now a roundup of this thread on the most frequent last names in Slovakia and Hungary:

http://www.pitt.edu/~votruba/qsonhist/lastnamesslovakiahungary.html

... with a map and an added example of the spelling changes of the Slovak last names typically carried out by Budapest in the 19th century. If anyone reads it and thinks of a way to make something more digestible, I'll be all ears.

[Eric 60]

Thanks, especially about Horvath and Toth. I see Kovács as a Slavic word.