Archive for the ‘hungary’ Category
The Banat is one of the regions of Europe known as contact zones, where peoples of different ethnicity, religion and language co-existed, and to an extent still co-exist – sometimes harmoniously, sometimes uneasily, as is the case the world over.
Imagined as a Venn diagram, the Banat is perhaps a natural intersection for the Serbs to the west (who had pushed north to escape the Ottomans) and the Romanians to the east. However, there is also an artificial historical factor, caused by the ruling Habsburgs’ intervention and planned settlement of the land in the 18th century and more natural immigration of Imperial subjects in the 19th century. The majority of these were German speakers – they became known as Swabians, although Swabia was only one of various German regions from which they came. In addition to the Germans, the Banat received, among others, Bulgarian, Croat, Czech, French, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, Spanish, Swiss and Ukrainian settlers – mostly but not exclusively Catholics (there were also Protestants of different persuasions, among them again many German settlers). And further broadening the mix of peoples in the area were Jewish merchants and professionals, Austrian civil servants, and Gypsy (locally Tsigani or Ţigani) settlements.
Resources and professional genealogical research services for those with German Banater ancestry are well-established. In the wake of WW2, rightly or wrongly, the Germans in Yugoslavia and Romania became persona non grata. The descendants of the Banat Germans now live in Germany, in Canada, in USA and elsewhere and, like all displaced and diaspora peoples, show a keen interest in their roots (roots which, of course, pass through the rich black soil of the Banat and extend beyond it to Baden and Lorraine, Westfalen and Württemberg).
However, Bluebird Research, as well as undertaking German genealogy in Serbia and Romania, can assist with your genealogical research in the Banat whatever the nationality or religion of your ancestors. We work in both Romania and Serbia; we are just as interested in the cultural and social history of the Hungarians and the Slovaks of the Banat; we have a special interest in the Jewish communities, now mostly lost; and in the Serbian Orthodox families, many of which can trace their histories back to “continental” Serbia (for instance to Šumadija), or to Herzegovina, or to Montenegro.
If you have ancestors from the Banat, and would like professional assistance with your family history research, please get in touch with us for a free assessment and estimate of costs. Research is affordable and success rates are generally high.
The Austro-Hungarian, or Habsburg, Empire, also known as the Dual Monarchy, collapsed and fractured during WW1 and new nation states emerged from its ruins, including of course the modest Central European state of Austria itself.
It is difficult to argue against today’s received opinion that empires are bad things and that it is wrong for one people to rule over another. In practice, though, the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire was largely benign. It is true that from time and time, and perhaps particularly although by no means exclusively in areas under Hungarian rule, emerging nationalisms were suppressed; sometimes this was by show of force, but by the late 19th century the Empire had become largely a bureaucratic organism.
The great elegist of the Empire, Joseph Roth, does not attribute the collapse of Austro-Hungary to the rise of Yugoslav and Romanian and Czechoslovak nationalism, but to the overweening pan-Germanic nationalism which was to have such devastating consequences for Europe.
In his 1938 novel The Emperor’s Tomb (translated by John Hoare, pub Granta, 1999), the character Count Chojnicki — a cipher for Roth himself — prophesied before the outbreak of WW1 that “Austria will perish at the hands of the Nibelungen fantasy”1. “It is the Slovenes, the Poles and Galicians from Ruthenia, the kaftan-clad Jews from Boryslaw2, the horse traders from the Bacska3, the Moslems from Sarajevo, the chestnut roasters from Mostar who sing our national anthem “Gott Erhalte”, while the Germans in the Empire sing German martial and chauvinist tunes. Similarly, the narrator and protagonist, Trotta, writes of the “tragic love which the Crown Lands4 bore to Austria”:
“The gypsies of the Puszta5, the Huzulen6 of Subcarpathia, the Jewish coachmen of Galicia, my own kin the Slovene chestnut roasters of Sipolje, the Swabian7 tobacco growers from the Bacska, the horse breeders of the Steppes, the Osman Sibersna8, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the horse traders from the Hanakei9 in Moravia, the weavers from the Erzgebirge10, the millers and coral dealers of Podolia11: all these were the open-handed providers of Austria.”
After WW1, reflecting on the demise of Austro-Hungary and the mediocrity to which defeated Austria had sunk, Chojnicki bemoans “the fatheads from the Alps and the Sudeten Germans, those cretinous Nibelungen… It was not our Czechs, our Poles, or Ruthenians who betrayed us, but the Germans, only the Germans, at our very heart.”
- Nibelungen: mythological nonsense popularised by Wagner
- Boryslaw: Boryslav, a small town now in Ukraine
- Bacska: properly Bačka, a region now largely in northern Serbia
- Crownlands: provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Puszta: the steppes of the Alföld, the great Hungarian plain
- Huzulen: the Hutsuls, a Ruthenian or western Ukrainian people
- Swabian: 18th century German settlers in the Banat in northern Serbia and adjacent Romania
- Osman Sibersna: a phrase not properly translated into English from the original German language die osmanische Sibersna but presumably referring to Ottomans of Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Hanakei: the Moravian people of the Haná region around the town of Olomouc, Czech Republic
- Erzgebirg: the Krušné Hory mountain range, also now in the Czech Republic
- Podolia: here western Podolia is meant, being the region around the city of Ternopil‘, now in Ukraine
Civil registration – mandatory official secular registering of vital events of birth, marriage and death – was implemented by different states at different times.
In Hungary before 1895, registration was the responsibility of church not state. What this means is that the different faiths recorded the baptisms, marriages and burials of members of their congregations in different ways.
This also means, of course, that baptism was not compulsory. While in the 19th century baptism was probably near universal for those of Christian faith in Hungary, equally it is clearly the case that there may be no record of birth or baptism for some individuals born before 1895 (for example, if one or both parents were not religious, or resented the charge for baptism, or were travelling, or were of no fixed abode).
Marriageable age, before the 1895 Civil Marriage Act in Hungary, was set by the customs and traditions of the various faiths. For example, the age of marriage for Roman Catholics was 14 for males and 12 for females (although of course such ages are absolute minima and were presumably very rare in the 19th century). Similarly, for the Calvinists, the marriageable ages were 18 for males and 15 for females. Under Jewish law, the minimum age for marriage was traditionally 13 years for boys and 12 years for girls. Of course, marriages at such young ages were uncommon. Before WW1, the average age at marriage for both sexes spanned a couple of years either side of 20, with the groom usually two to four years older than his bride. This of course is in respect of first marriages. In the second half of the 19th century, up to 1 in 5 marriages related to remarriage of the widowed. Interestingly, demographers have reported that Hungarian widowers tended to remarry more quickly and more frequently than widows.
Marriage (and divorce) in Hungary became a civil institution from 1st October 1895. Henceforth, civil registration of marriages was compulsory; religious celebration was optional and a matter of personal conviction.
For genealogists, it is worth knowing the marriageable ages in different jurisdictions at different times. While, of course, some brides and grooms might be economical with the truth when declaring their ages, either adding or subtracting years to suit the occasion and the need, in theory when searching speculatively for the known, expected or possible marriage of a particular individual it makes sense to search from the marriageable age onwards, rather than covering years when a marriage should not have taken place. Only if a marriage is not found in such years should you backtrack to the years in which, strictly speaking, marriage was not permitted.
In this regard, it is important to note that Hungary had a surprisingly high marriageable age regulation between the Wars. In the 1930s, the legal age for marriage was 24 years. This was reduced to 20 years in 1952, then to 18 years, and finally, in 1973, to 16 years for females conditional upon parental consent.
Bluebird Research provides professional family history research assistance to genealogists researching their Hungarian roots and would be pleased to help or advise you as you investigate your family tree. Contact us for a free assessment.
In 1862 A A Paton published volume 2 of his Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic, about his experiences travelling in the Hungary (and elsewhere) in 1849. This was before the 1867 Ausgleich, or compromise, which established the Dual Monarchy and gave Hungary dominion over lands which today are in Croatia, Romania and Slovakia, for example.
Paton visited the town of Szeged, or Szegedin in German, which lies in SE Hungary today but was more or less centrally located within the Hungarian Kingdom up until the country, defeated in WW1, was severely truncated by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
He remarks on the impact of the ascendant Hungarian culture on the minority nationalities of Szeged:
“Most of the shop-signs in the public place of the Palanka have German names, but the designation of the trade and baptismal name is in Magyar. During the mania for Magyarisation, none were so keen to identify themselves with the Magyars as the small German shop-keepers… Magyarism was very naturally more or less associated with the idea of aristocracy and supremacy and, while the Croats and Serbians, and the great majority of Slovaks, much to their honour, were rather proud of their nationality than ashamed of it, these German tradesmen… were anxious to throw off their own names and adopt Magyar ones. Not one, two, or three, but hundreds of such instances have occurred. For instance, a German whose name is, let us say, Johann Hoffman, dubs himself Remeny Janos, because Remen is the Magyar word “to hope,” and Janos is the Magyar for John.”
The “Palanka” in this account is the core of the old town of Szeged.
It is not clear how far individuals such as the fictitious János Remény would have travelled along the road of assimilation. Over the next two generations, their families might have become completely magyarised, or they may have retained a German identity for their private lives, with the new Magyar identity used primarily for business and social advantage. In any event, the family historian researching their apparently bona fide ethnic Hungarian roots should be alive to the possibility that at some point the family name may disappear from the documentary record.
The first waves of Greek Catholics – mostly Carpatho-Rusyns or Ruthenes, but some Slovaks and Hungarians – arrived in USA circa 1868 to 1870, mostly from what was then NE Hungary and within a few years also from the Galicia in the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy. The most significant early settlements, all well-established before 1890, were in the American towns shown below (with the archeparchy or eparchy from which they obtained their priest given afterwards in brackets):
Freeland PA (Munkács)
Hazleton PA (Munkács)
Jersey City NJ (Lemberg)
Kingston PA (Eperjes)
Minneapolis MN (Eperjes)
Olyphant PA (Eperjes)
Scranton PA (Munkács)
Shamokin PA (Peremysl)
Shenandoah PA (Lemberg)
Wilkes-Barre PA (Munkács)
The Greek Catholic eparchy from which the parish priest was taken may indicate something of the majority origin of the parishioners – i.e. Eperjes (today Prešov in Slovakia), Munkács (now Mukachevo in Ukraine), Lemberg (L’viv, Ukraine) and Peremyshl (Przemyśl, Poland). However, it must be emphasised that these ecclesiastical districts are adjacent to one another and do not heed international borders. For example, an immigrant from Peremyshl eparchy may have been born equally in what is today Poland or in Ukraine.
Greek Catholic communities to develop throughout the 1890s and beyond, especially in Pennsylvania (for example, parishes were formed in Audenried, Braddock, Freeland, Lansford, Johnstown, Leisenring, Mahanoy City, Mayfield, McKeesport, Minersville, Mount Carmel, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Ramey) but also in New York State (Brooklyn, Buffalo and Yonkers), New Jersey (Passaic, Perth Amboy and Trenton) and Ohio (Cleveland).
Hungary became an equal partner with Austria in the Dual Monarchy following the 1867 Ausgleich, or compromise. Ironically, Hungary, which had been struggling for national self-determination and parity of recognition, then pursued policies which, in trying to consolidate its own nation state, failed to recognise properly the rights of the national minorities within its borders.
A policy of magyarisation was pursued vigorously, with view to welding all regions and peoples into a single nation state, as had been achieved in, for example, France. However, unlike France, Hungary contained within its border almost entire nations, such as the Croat and Slovak, and very significant populations of, for example, Romanians and Serbs living in regions very sparsely populated by Hungarians. The magyarisation project was therefore a doomed enterprise and its measures – for instance, to make Hungarian the exclusive official language of state and the language of instruction in schools, with church services to be held and parish registers kept in Hungarian – quickly aroused resentment and opposition.
The pressure upon non-Magyar Hungarian subjects to assimilate included pressure to change patently non-Hungarian or insufficiently Hungarian surnames. The legal process of change of name was simplified to the submitting of a petition. The fee was reduced from 5 forint to 50 krajcár (half a forint), meaning that poverty could not be pleaded as a good reason to retain one’s true name. These cheap “shilling names” were adopted by many among the professional and business classes. Robert Seton-Walsh, writing in his Racial Problems In Hungary of 1908, states that the “demoralising custom” of change of name “has played havoc with the family history of the Hungarian middle classes; and few countries will supply such a puzzle to the genealogist of the twenty-second century”.
Among the examples he gives:
the Oriental scholar Hermann Bamberger taking the name Ármin Vámbéry; the banker Eierstock taking the name Tőkőlyi; the historian Frankl taking the name Vilmos Fraknói; the ethnologist Hundsdorfer taking the name János Hunfalvy; the painter Lieb taking the name Mihály Munkácsy; the banker Löwenmuth taking the name Báthori; the poet Petrović taking the name Sándor Petőfi; the literary critic Franz Schedel taking the name Ferenc Toldy; and the politician Weinberger taking the name Soma Visontai.
The campaign intensified and was particularly directed at those in official positions, such as local authority civil servants, school teachers, railway employees and post office staff, with a clear implication that those not complying could at the very least not expect promotion within the service. Seton-Walsh also cites a document issued by the Royal Inspector of Schools showing exemplary official changes of name among teachers in Bihar county in 1881, designed to encourage colleagues to follow suit:
August Bruckenthal of Haimagi taking the name Bihari John Modora of Olosig (known as Érolaszi in Hungarian) taking the name Tinodi Nicholas Radovich of Cuzap (Középes in Hungarian) taking the name Keti
Urban German and Jewish Hungarians – who of course were not pushing for their own independent nation state as the Croats and Slovaks were – assimilated more readily than the rural populations of Romanians and Slavs and those family historians with German and Jewish roots from Hungary should be alert to the possibility of a change of name in the nineteenth century whenever research results are not achieved under the expected family name. However, anyone with ancestors from Hungary should be mindful of the change of name campaigns and their possible impact upon their family history research.
The emancipation of the peasantry and the reform and re-distribution of land in Central and Eastern Europe during the course of the 19th and early 20th century had profound consequences for social mobility. Ironically, however, the peasantry seldom enjoyed great benefits. Freedom from serfdom meant freedom to be an underpaid and often under-employed agricultural labourer, or a subsistence smallholder of minimal land and assets, or a dislocated casual labourer in city factories.
Rather, the social revolution in the countryside created movement between the upper and middle classes. The topmost echelon of Hungarian society, the aristocratic and noble landowners such as the Bánffy, Esterházy, Jósika, Kemény, Somssich, Teleki and Wesselényi families, possessed vast estates and political power, which they retained well into the 20th century. However, beneath them was a broad layer of lesser nobility and gentry which did not fare so well once it lost its free peasant labour and exemption from taxation. They were not proficient in land or financial management. As they started to fail, their former estate managers and upwardly mobile bankers, industrialists and merchants purchased their great houses and lands. 19th century fiction abounds with scenarios in which the two previously distinct social classes inter-marry: the impoverished aristocrat marries into the new wealth of the family of a financier or manufacturer, while the latter marries into the name and prestige of the aristocrat. More frequently, of course, the dispossessed gentry simply became déclassé and found employment in the civil service, the military and the judiciary. In this way, the embourgeoisement of the former landed gentry still left them in positions of influence.
Through estate purchase and intermarriage, the most successful nouveau riche entrepreneurs and merchants assimilated into the upper strata of Hungarian society. Noble titles could also be bought. The industrialist Manfréd Weiss (1857-1922), became Baron Csepeli Weiss, Csepel being the island in the Danube on the south side of Budapest on which his iron and steel factory and munitions works were located. The sugar manufacturer Sándor Deutsch (1852-1913) became Baron Hatvany-Deutsch, the town of Hatvan 60 km east of Budapest being the site of his sugar factory.
Of course, as the 20th century wore on, further social upheaval, both in wartime and under Communism, brought vast change to both the upper and middle classes in Hungary. When undertaking family history research, it is important to remember that social mobility affects all classes and that movement can be up or down or both at different times in the history of any one family. It is also, of course, one of the destabilising factors which leads to migration within a country or emigration abroad.
Burgenland is an invention. All administrative regions other than island nations are, to a greater or lesser extent, inevitably inventions: why, for example, are the borders of any continental European state where they are and not a little bit further west or east, or north or south? But Burgenland is quite literally an invention and a recent one.
Before the Great War, what is today Burgenland was simply a strip of territory on the westernmost border of Hungary abutting Austria. It did not really have a name. It was ethnically mixed, with a population of Austrians, Croatians, Gypsies, Hungarians and Jews. The Austrians made up the majority but not in all towns or areas, some of which were predominantly Hungarian or Croatian. This multi-national flavour was true, of course, of not a few regions in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After the War, however, the Great Powers decided that defeated Hungary had to be dismembered, partly to punish and weaken it and partly to enable the self-determination of the peoples of what became “the Little Entente” of the newly founded states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and an enlarged Romania. However, for no apparent good reason, defeated Austria was awarded the westernmost strip of defeated Hungary. The other option had been the creation of a “Czech corridor” linking the Slavic states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, but this was dismissed in favour of unification with Austria. A plebiscite allowed Hungary to retain the largely Hungarian town of Sopron, which had been mooted as the likely capital of the new Austrian province.
The territory ceded to Austria in 1921 needed a name and Burgenland – “castle land” – was chosen.
What followed illustrates the effect of moving international borders. The 20th century nation states boxed in peoples as homogeneously as possible and effectively discouraged minorities. Burgenland was now Austrian. Austrians moved in. Hungarians moved out. Slavs emigrated to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Austrian majority increased with the 1930s and creeping institutional germanisation. When the Austrians welcomed the Anschluss with Nazi Germany, the fate of the Burgenland’s Jews was sealed. It is true that today there are still Croatian and Hungarian minorities in Burgenland but the historical multi-ethnic mix of the region has been greatly diminished.
For family historians in the English-speaking world with roots in Burgenland, it is worth knowing that emigration from the region built up slowly during the closing years of the 19th century but gained momentum in 1921 to 1924, when Hungarians in particular emigrated to North America. Although Burgenland is Austrian, it should not necessarily be assumed that surviving vital records will be in Austria rather than over the border in Sopron or elsewhere in Hungary. Remember also that the majority of settlements in Burgenland have a Hungarian language name which may not be shown on modern Austrian maps and atlases, while others have Croat names. If you have Hungarian roots and are interested in the Burgenland, it is worth looking for a map published in Hungary, as this will almost certainly show the old Hungarian names. Concordances have also been published which match the Austrian, Hungarian and Croat names of individual settlements.
By 1921 Hungary was less than one third of its pre-War size. The Treaty of Trianon had sheared off great swathes of its former territory and awarded them to an enlarged Romania and to the newly formed Czechoslovakia and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes.
The Hungarians of the lost territories were faced with a choice: did they remain in the successor state in which they found themselves, with all its uncertainty, or did they move to within the redefined international borders of Hungary? Many were tied to the land on which their families had lived for generations and to the churches and cemeteries where they and their ancestors had been baptised, married and buried.
Of course, for many, however, this dilemma did not present itself as a choice. As early as 1919, the Hungarian authorities had created a national administration for refugees. Official figures for 1921 show 233,503 refugees in Hungary: the greatest number, 139,390, had come from Romania, while 56,657 had arrived from Czechoslovakia and 37,456 from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes. The experience of these refugees was like that of other refugees throughout Central and Eastern Europe. They camped uncertainly at frontier towns and slept rough in railway stations. In the absence of any other options, such as those arising from pre-War family or business connections elsewhere in the country, they headed to Budapest. In the capital they again lived in makeshift camps or in centres set up by the authorities prior to permanent resettlement.
When conducting family history research in Central or Eastern Europe, it is imperative to orientate your investigation carefully at the outset. If a passenger list, or an immigration or naturalisation paper, or a census return or an identity card, speak of a person being Hungarian or coming from Hungary, it is necessary to place that statement in the context of both the date of the document and the subject’s likely perception and understanding of their situation. The fact that grandmother or great grandfather “came from Hungary” does not mean that they were born within the borders of today’s Hungary. If they were born before 1921, it is quite possible that their place of birth is within a successor state, with all the implications that has for your research: you might need to consider records in Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia or even Ukraine.
Civil registration has been conducted, and mandatory, in Hungary since October 1895. Of course, after this date religious communities continued to register locally events of birth or baptism, marriage, and death or burial, but these ceased to carry legal recognition.
In common with most other European countries, registration of birth, marriage and death in Hungary is not centralised; rather it is conducted, and all records are held, locally at municipal level.
This can cause serious problems for the genealogist, especially when undertaking 20th century research. Self-evidently, it is necessary to know exactly where a child was born, a couple married or a person died in order to request a certified copy of an entry from the register. If you do not know this, you need to make enquiries, often unavoidably speculative, to find out.
The problem is magnified when a family being researched comes from the capital. Budapest is today sub-divided into 23 separate districts. The districts are customarily identified by Roman numerals. For example, the northern district (kerület) of Újpest, on the east bank of the Duna (Danube), is Budapest IV, while the inner city Pest district of Erzsébetváros is Budapest VII.
Many of these districts are of modern origin, encompassing large suburbs and outlying villages which have been swallowed up by the capital during its growth in the 20th century. The original, historic districts are the 10 numbered from I to X and it is in these that you should concentrate enquiries if you do not know where a family lived after 1895.
As is also common in Europe, the more recent civil registers are closed, other than to the individual, their close family or attorney, for a prescribed number of years, on account of personal privacy and data protection concerns. In Hungary, births are restricted for 90 years, marriages for 60 and deaths for 30. It is usually possible for private family historians to obtain certificates from within these closed periods upon application to the relevant register office, subject to proof of identity and relationship. A letter of authority can be used to delegate the application for certificates to a third party such as Bluebird Research and we would be happy to advise further upon request.
Gyula Krúdy, or Krúdy Gyula in Hungarian style, is a writer like no other I know. Although his Sunflower of 1918 is a great if sometimes perplexing novel, much of his literary output consists of what you might call feuilleton, or reportage, short observational and often reflective pieces which were published in newspapers and journals. The first and I believe only volume of these pieces in English translation, edited by John Bátki, was published by the Central European University Press in 2000 and is entitled Krúdy’s Chronicles: Turn-of-the-Century Hungary in Gyula Krúdy’s Journalism.
In a short piece called “A Hungarian Village After Sundown”, Krúdy reflects on the impact of the War. It is 11th August 1915. He stops briefly in the largely Calvinist village of Kiliti, en route to the town of Siófok which lies on the southern shore of Lake Balaton in Somogy megye or county. It is “a good-sized prosperous village with a broad main street”. There has been a great harvest already, the cattle are plump and even the lime blossom has been gathered in and despatched to Budapest for a tidy profit. However, the innkeeper is not contented: “No one comes to the tavern. All the men are at the front.” Every able-bodied man of fighting years has attested and joined the 44th Regiment.
The innkeeper goes on to say that, if the war continues, it will put an end to the practice of egyke in Somogy county. An egyke is an only child and, by extension, the practice of having one child per family. In this county, egyke was the tradition that ensured prosperity: the family’s estate was not subdivided upon death between many children but passed down intact from one generation to the next. “No one’s had a second child around here as far back as anyone can remember”, muses the innkeeper, exaggerating.
However, the wisdom and logic of egyke did not foresee the horror of the First World War and the Eastern Front in Galicia. There were no exemptions for only sons; all must serve the country. So “those precious only sons are now falling on the battlefield… Now the women realise how foolish they’ve been with this practice – the ones with grown sons are the most woebegone for it’s too late for them to hope for a second child to replace the older one who’s died”.
Of course, soldiers come back on furlough. Some were on home leave in the village recently. Wives have retrieved cradles from attics. “So in eight or nine months’ time the registries of birth will again be opened by the priests in Somogy county… a second child will be born to families that already have their one son… In this neighbourhood the women are all expecting babies to replace the fallen sons.”
This is the kind of insight that you are unlikely to find elsewhere in histories; it flourishes in the writings of Krúdy and, for example, his approximate contemporary Joseph Roth, whose non-fiction is also highly recommended. It is in such writings, perhaps generally regarded at the time as ephemera, that the times were captured, week by week. And of course, they shine a light on family history research: where else might one ever learn of egyke and how it explains to us that surprisingly beanpole-shaped family tree we have been researching in Somogye county?
In Hungary, names were and still are formatted differently to those in all other European cultures. This can create problems for the unwary beginning their research into their Hungarian ancestry.
Firstly, name order is, to an English speaker, reversed. In other words, in normal usage the family name precedes the personal name (and the terms “forename” and “surname” cease to be entirely apt). For example, Csillag Márton might be the son of a man named Csillag István and have a brother named Csillag Jenő.
If István had a son of the same name, the father and son might be named id Csillag István and ifj Csillag István respectively to distinguish between them. These abbreviations for idősebb and ifjú are equivalent to senior and junior in English and precede the family name.
István’s wife would usually be known as Csillag Istvánné – that is to say, as Mrs István Csillag (or, fully translated into English, as “Mrs Stephen Star”). In traditional usage, therefore, married women take the family and personal name of their husband with the suffix –né added to the latter.
A woman who is widowed gains a prefix to her married name, becoming özv Csillag Istvánné. The prefix is an abbreviation of özvegy.
If you see the phrase özv Csillag Istvánné szűl Deák Mária, you are being told that the widow’s maiden name (abbreviated to szűl or sz) was Maria Deák and that she married, and is now widowed from, István Csillag.
In other contexts, you may find, for example, Anna férj Kálmán Jánosné. This denotes that Anna is the wife of János Kálmán.
Or you may come across a couple’s identity expressed as Kálmán János és neje szűl Nagy Anna: that is to say, János Kálmán and his wife born as Anna Nagy.