Demographics of Budapest - Ethnicity

Ethnicity

After the conquest of the Carpathian Basin one of the main Hungarian (Magyar) tribes, named Megyer, settled in the present-territory of Budapest, more exactly on the both bank of the river Danube in Békásmegyer („Frog’s Megyer”) and Káposztásmegyer („Cabbage’s Megyer”), now high-rise housing estates of the city. Ethnic name „Magyar” is originated from the tribe name „Megyer”. According to the 1494-95 medieval census, was implemented by the Hungarian Royal Treasury, the present-territory of Budapest had Hungarian majority. The native Magyar population fled from the area during the Ottoman wartimes, in the 17th century Buda was home to mainly Turkish and South Slavic population. Many of them died in the Battle of Buda in 1686, survivors were expelled. In the late-17th and the early-18th century Buda, Óbuda and Pest was settled by Germans from Southern Germany and the Rhineland. The proportion of Hungarians rose gradually since the late 18th century, overtook Germans around the unification in 1873. Between 1787 and 1910 number of ethnic Hungarians rose from 2.3 million to 10.2 million due to population explosion, generated by the resettlement of the Great Hungarian Plain and Lower Hungary by Hungarian settlers from the relatively overpopulated northern and western counties of the Kingdom of Hungary. Hungarian villages and market towns become overcrowded, Budapest has gone the main destionation to the rural surplus population due to industrialisation. Magyars increased their number from 200,000 to 2,000,000 between 1880 and 1980. By the end of the World War II the Hungarian capital can be described as an ethnically homogeneous city.

According to the 2001 census, 91.2% (1,631,043) of the total population (1,777,921) was ethnic Hungarian, 1% (18,097) German, 0.8% (14,019) Roma and 0.3% (4,929) Slovak. Non-Whites represented only 0.1% (2,289 Chinese and 192 African) of the residents. 93,071 people (5.2%) did not declare their ethnicity.