Family Names
Most Jews did not have family names before 1783. Still, we have the following family names recorded:
- 1050: Jászkonti,
- 1263: Farkas,
- 1350: Hosszú,
- 16th century: Cseh, Jakab, Gazdag, Fekete, Nagy, Kis,
- 1780: Bárány, Csonka, Horpács, Jónap, Kohányi, Kossuth, Kosztolányi, Lengyel, Lőrincz, Lukács, Szarvas, Szabó, Varga.
Emperor Joseph II wanted to facilitate the centralization of his empire by Germanization. He ordered the Jews to go in front of committees from 1783. There the Jews either had to choose or were given German family names, depending on the local circumstances.
The first wave of Magyarization of family names occurred between 1840 and 1849. This was stopped during the absolutist rule after the Hungarian revolution until 1867. After the Ausgleich, many Jews changed their family names from German to Hungarian.
A decree of the Hungarian Defense Ministry about "race validation" in 1942 complained that simply no Hungarian or German names were "safe" as Jews could have that name. Slavic names were deemed safer, but the decree listed 58 Slavic-sounding names Jews regularly had.
Read more about this topic: Judaism In Hungary
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or names:
“I duly acknowledge that I have gone through a long life, with fewer circumstances of affliction than are the lot of most men. Uninterrupted health, a competence for every reasonable want, usefulness to my fellow-citizens, a good portion of their esteem, no complaint against the world which has sufficiently honored me, and above all, a family which has blessed me by their affections, and never by their conduct given me a moment’s pain.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)