Hungarian Names - Hungarian Surnames

Hungarian Surnames

See also: :Category:Hungarian-language surnames and :wikt:Appendix:Hungarian surnames

The Hungarian language normally puts family names first, except for foreign names, in Hungarian speech and text. Some Hungarian surnames relate to professions, for example Szabó "tailor," Kovács "smith," Halász "fisher." Other surnames relate to non-Magyar ethnic origin. For example common Hungarian surnames include Németh "German," Horvát "Croat," Tóth an outdated term for "Slovak" (now Szlovák in modern Hungarian), Oláh an outdated term for "Romanian", and Lengyel "Polish." During the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the kingdom of Hungary non-Hungarian ethnic people such as Jews, Germans and Slovaks were encouraged to adopt Hungarian surnames. Some people with German names translated them directly into Hungarian.

A few given names are also used as family names, and this practice may confuse even a native Hungarian speaker. For example, in the unlikely case that a Hungarian speaker has never heard of Attila József, they would be unable to tell which of the two was his family name, because it could be either.