Hungarian Names - Hungarian Law On Names

Hungarian Law On Names

By law, children born as Hungarian citizens may bear no more than two surnames (most people have only one; those who have two may hyphenate them). They can also have only one or two given names (religious names not included, see below). Given names can be chosen by the parents from an official list of several thousand names (technically, one list for each gender). If the intended name is not on the list, the parents need to apply for approval. Applications are considered by the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences following a set of principles. Thus, names are approved if they are not derogatory or overly diminutive, can be written and pronounced easily, can be recognised as either male or female, etc. Approved names expand the official list, the newest edition of which is regularly published. A lot of recent additions are foreign names, which, however, must be spelled following Hungarian phonetics, e.g. Jennifer becomes Dzsenifer or Joe becomes Dzsó.

Those who belong to an officially recognized minority in Hungary can also choose names from their own culture, whereby a register of given names maintained by the respective minority governance must be observed.

If one or both parents of a child to be named are foreign citizens, the given name(s) may be chosen in accordance with the respective foreign law.