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Floreas into Virágs: State Regulation of First Names in Dualist Hungary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Ágoston Berecz
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The Kingdom of Hungary instituted the civil registry of births, marriages, and deaths in 1894. While the new institution was both eulogized and criticized as a major step in the separation of church and state and toward the creation of a modern, secular Hungary, it also opened up a new path for nation building. In this exceedingly multilingual and multinational country, churches often acted as proxies of cultural and political institutions for the national minorities. In the present article, I examine the specifically nation-building aspects embodied in the new regulation for the official use of first names that accompanied Act XXXIII of 1894 on the civil registry, and focus particularly on Romanian first names. Due to their considerable mismatch with Hungarian first names, Romanian names posed a special challenge to policy makers, and for this reason they demonstrate some less obvious dimensions of the changes instituted in 1894. The geographic parameters of this investigation have been imposed by the spatial framework of a wider research project on the interconnections among language, nationalism, and social change in the eastern part of Dualist Hungary, a territory encompassing Transylvania, the easternmost counties of contemporary Hungary proper (according to the administrative division created in 1876), and the eastern two-thirds of the Banat. This framework enables me to make comparisons with other ethnolinguistic groups, notably Transylvanian Saxons and the Catholic Germans of the Banat.

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Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 47 , April 2016 , pp. 107 - 127
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Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2016 

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References

1 The first outcome of this project, my book on the teaching of Hungarian in primary schools, was published by Pasts, Inc. at Central European University: Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (Budapest, 2013).

2 András Mező, A magyar hivatalos helységnévadá s [Official Hungarian locality naming] (Budapest, 1982).

3 Viktor Karády and István Kozma, Név és nemzet: Családnév-változtatás, névpolitika és nemzetiségi erőviszonyok Magyarországon a feudalizmustól a kommunizmusig [Name and nation: Name change, name politics and ethnic power relations in Hungary from feudalism to Communism] (Budapest, 2002); Tamás Farkas, Családnév-változtatás Magyarországon [Family name change in Hungary] (Budapest, 2009); idem, “The Research of Official Family Name Changes in Hungary,” Onomastica Uralica 7 (2008): 87–102 Google Scholar; and Tamás Farkas and István Kozma, eds., A családnév-változtatások történetei időben, térben, társadalomban [Stories of family-name change in time, space, and society] (Budapest, 2009).

4 Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe (London, 1998), 99–111 and 191.

5 William G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (repr. Louisville, 2003), 144–49.

6 Dietz Bering, The Stigma of Names: Antisemitism in German Daily Life, 1812–1933, trans. Neville Plaice (Cambridge, 1992), 35 and 48–65.

7 Philippe Besnard and Guy Desplanques, Un Prénom pour toujours: La Cote des prénoms hier, aujourd'hui et demain (Paris, 1986), 26, and see http://www.legilux.public.lu/rgl/1803/A/0001/Z.pdf (accessed 17 March 2016).

8 For the French situation, where the earlier parish registers had already been kept in the national language, see Prénoms pouvant être inscrits sur les registres de l’état civil destinés à constater les naissances: Conformément à la loi du 11 germinal an XI (1er avril 1803) (Paris, 1858), as well as the 1865 revised edition of the same list; and Paul Geslin de Kersolon, Catalogue des noms et prénoms qui, seuls, peuvent être donnés légalement à l’état civil et au baptême (Paris, 1876).

9 According to a survey on Google Books, the genre cropped up in Germany in the 1830s, and together with its more highbrow but in fact scarcely different cousin, the popular etymological dictionary of first names, yielded eight separate German, English, and French titles in the 1850s.

10 I use the term inventory when referring to the ensemble of types, but corpus for the ensemble of tokens.

11 Ernst Müser, Führung und Abänderung der Familien- und Vornamen in Preußen (Düsseldorf, 1913); available at http://argewe.lima-city.de/tipps/Namensaenderung3.htm (accessed 17 March 2016).

12 Helmut Glück, Die preußisch-polnische Sprachenpolitik: Eine Studie zur Theorie und Methodologie der Forschung über Sprachenpolitik, Sprachbewußtsein und Sozialgeschichte am Beispiel der preußisch-deutschen Politik gegenüber der polnischen Minderheit vor 1914 (Hamburg, 1979), 353–54.

13 Paul Lévy, Histoire linguistique d'Alsace et de Lorraine, vol. 2, De la Révolution française à 1918 (Paris, 1929), 365.

14 Testimony about the changing practice in Ireland is provided in Robert E. Matheson, Varieties and Synonymes of Surnames and Christian Names in Ireland: For the Guidance of Registration Officers and the Public in Searching the Indexes of Births, Deaths, and Marriages (Dublin, 1890), and its 2nd ed., 1901.

15 Liam Mac Mathúna, “What's in an Irish Name? A Study of the Personal Naming Systems of Irish and Irish English,” in The Celtic Englishes IV: The Interface between English and the Celtic Languages; Proceedings of the fourth International Colloquium on the “Celtic Englishes” held at the University of Potsdam in Golm (Germany) from 22–26 September 2004, ed. Hildegard L. C. Tristram, 64–87, at 73–74 (Potsdam, 2005). Available at https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3908 (accessed 18 February 2016).

16 Magyar statisztikai közlemények, new series, 1 (Budapest, 1893), 223 and 379.

17 Compare with the contemporary Transylvanian Saxon Gymnasium teacher Hans Ungar's historical note on the earlier translatability of family names: “früher der Familienname, wie der Taufname auch jetzt noch, wenn übersetzbar, ebenso wie jedes andere Wort im Verkehr behandelt und einfach aus der einen Sprache in die andere übersetzt wurde”; Ungar, Hans, “Ungarisches Lehngut im Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischen,” Die Karpathen 5 (1911–12): 428–30Google Scholar, 472–4, 518–23, 563–8, 589–93, 630–5, 730–3, and 763–5, at 565.

18 It may be telling that even in his private journal, the Romanian Greek Catholic metropolitan Victor Mihályi referred to his colleague Kornél Hidasy, bishop of Szombathely, as Corneliu, although the latter form did not necessarily correspond to a different pronunciation in the “etymological” (Latinist) orthography that he used; “Ziarul întâmplărilor mai momentuoase din viaţa Episcopului Victor Mihályi al Lugojului, scris cu mâna-i proprie în următoarele” [Bishop Victor Mihályi's journal about the more momentous events in his life, written by his own hand as follows], in Memoriile unui ierarh uitat: Victor Mihályi de Apşa (1841–1918) [Memoirs of a forgotten high priest: Victor Mihályi de Apșa, 1841–1918], eds Nicolae Bocşan and Ion Cârja (Cluj-Napoca, 2009), 231–332, at 241.

19 On the evidence of its three years between 1904 and 1906, editors of the Déva/Deva-based Hungarian paper Hunyadvármegye tended to leave peasants’ first names in Romanian and translate those of the middle classes.

20 To quote just one example, the Déva-based advocate Francisc Hossu Longin later remembered: “Otherwise, I always introduced myself as Francisc Hossu Longin and in Hungarian as Longin Hossu Ferenc.” What he was trying to stress here is that he used his Latinized family name (he was born Hossu/Hosszu) in the same way in Hungarian as in Romanian; Francisc Hossu Longin, Amintiri din via ța mea [Memories from my life] (Cluj-Napoca, 1975), 194.

21 For instance, Conservative politician and literary author János Asbóth gave his name as “Joane de Asbóth” both in his letter to historian Gheorghe Bariț and on the cover of the Romanian translation of his parliamentary speech against the church political laws; the passionate Hungarian nationalist Jenő Gagyi signed his contribution to the Romanian journal Transilvania as “Eugen Gagyi de Etéd”; and Lumina, the short-lived Romanian newspaper of the Independentist Party, launched in 1906, referred to politicians of the party by forms like “Francisc Kossuth” or “Ludovic Bay.” See Gheorghe Bariț magyar levelezése [Correspondence in Hungarian] (Bucharest, 1975), 155; Vorbirea deputatului Joane de Asbóth din cercul Sasca pentru libertatea religiosa a poporului crestin [Speech by János Asbóth, deputy of the Sasca/Szászka constituency, in defense of Christians’ religious freedom] (Budapest, 1894); and “Eugen Gagyi de Etéd,” “Regulatio Diocesis Transilvanicae disunitae anno 1805,” Transilvania 42 (1911): 38–61 Google Scholar, 147–71 and 265–94.

22 Barbara Jelavich, Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State 1821–1879 (Cambridge, 1984).

23 Arhivele Naționale ale României (henceforth, ANR), Direcția Județeană Brașov, Fond Breasla cizmarilor din Brașov, bundles 45 and 46.

24 Miron Țic, Petru Balaj, and Partenie Vasiu Verghelia, Cronica de la Ilia-Mure șană [Chronicle of Ilia/Marosillye] (Deva, 2005), 268 and 270.

25 Pop, Iustin, “Maghiarisarea—în justiție” [Magyarization—in the judiciary], Libertatea 13/26 July 1902 Google Scholar.

26 ANR Direcția Județeană Hunedoara, Fond Tribunalul Hunedoara, 2/1891.

27 ANR Direcția Județeană Bistrița-Năsăud, Fond Prefectura județului Năsăud, 8/1886, 7. Cf. Mihai Eminescu, “Mai lesne se torc” [It is easier to spin], in Opere [Works], vol. 13 (Bucharest, 1985), 315–16.

28 Editorial from Dreptatea 16/28 May 1897 Google Scholar.

29 Petru Oallde, Lupta pentru limbă românească în Banat: Apărarea și afirmarea limbii române, la sfîrșitul secolului al XIX-lea și începutul secolului al XX-lea [The struggle for Romanian in the Banat: The defense and the affirmation of the Romanian language at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century] (Timișoara, 1983), 94.

30 See Moritz Csáky, Der Kulturkampf in Ungarn: Die kirchenpolitische Gesetzgebung der Jahre 1894/95 (Graz, 1967).

31 Decree nos. 86.225/1895 and 49.893/1898 of the minister of the interior; Magyarországi rendeletek tára 29 (1895)Google Scholar, vol. 2, 1397, and Belügyi Közlöny 3 (1898): 261Google Scholar.

32 Decree no. 80.000/1906 of the minister of the interior, section 55 point 7 and section 82, in Magyarországi rendeletek tára 40 (1906): 1834 and 1869–70Google Scholar.

33 MTA Kézirattár RAL 440/1892.

34 Nem-magyar keresztnevek jegyzéke [List of non-Hungarian first names] (Budapest, 1893, 2nd ed. 1909, 3rd ed. 1914).

35 Belügyi Szemle 10 (1905): 227Google Scholar.

36 See Bánffy's own appraisal of the law in Dezső Bánffy, Magyar nemzetiségi politika [Hungarian nationalities policy] (Budapest, 1903), 149–55.

37 “Egy kolozsvári táblai elnök rendelete” [An order by a Kolozsvár high court of appeal judge], Egyetértés [Budapest] 24 July 1902.

38 György Joannovics and Oszkár Asbóth to the Ministry of the Interior; MTA (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia) Kézirattár RAL (Régi Akadémiai Levéltár) 6/1899.

39 Decree 55.093/1899 of the minister of the interior, in Magyarországi rendeletek tára 34 (1900), vol. 1, 17.

40 MTA Kézirattár RAL 23/1891.

41 Ioan Popovici et al., eds., Bihor: Permanențe ale luptei naționale românești [Bihor/Bihar: Constants of Romanian national struggle], vol. 1, 1892–1900; documente [1892–1900; documents] (Bucharest, 1988), 82–83.

42 Decree 65.788/1896 of the minister of defense, and decree 26.141/1910 of the minister of justice; Magyarországi rendeletek tára 30 (1896): 543Google Scholar, and Igazságügyi Közlöny 19 (1910): 415Google Scholar.

43 “Egy kolozsvári táblai elnök rendelete.”

44 A magyar nyelv tanításának terve a nem-magyar tannyelvű népiskolában és útmutatás ezen tanításterv használatához [Curriculum for the teaching of the Hungarian language in the non Hungarian-medium primary school and guidance for the use of this curriculum] (Budapest, 1908), 37, and Libertatea 23 August/5 September 1908.

45 Mihály Láng, A magyar beszéd tanításának természetszerü módja a nem-magyar ajku népiskolákban: A tanító-, tanítónőképző-intézeti növendékek, tanítók és tanítónők számára [The natural way of teaching Hungarian in non-Hungarian-speaking schools: For training school students and primary teachers] (Budapest, 1900), 92.

46 Ibid., 109. Cf. Pál Szebeni, “A magyar nyelv módszeres kezelése románajku népiskolákban” [The methodical treatment of Hungarian language in Romanian-medium primary schools], Néptanítók Lapja 16, no. 3 (1883): 37–38 Google Scholar and no. 4, 53–5, at 37, and A magyar nyelv tanításának terve, 37.

47 Helmut Frisch, Werschetz ( Versecz–Vršac): Kommunale Entwicklung und deutsches Leben der Banater Wein- und Schulstadt (Vienna, 1982), 481; and Hans Klein, Heimatbuch der Heckegemeinde Josefsdorf im Banat ([Saulgau], 1986), 165.

48 “Von diesem Tage an hießen die Schüler nicht mehr ‘János’ sondern ‘Hans,’ nicht ‘Károly’ sondern ‘Karl’”; Frisch, 369.

49 The bulk of the archives of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior for 1896–1918 are kept in the Cluj County Branch of the National Archives of Romania and are closed to researchers.

50 Alsó-Fehér vármegye Hivatalos Lapja 1914, 36 and 456; Brassóvármegye Hivatalos Lapja 1914, 17, 39, 224, 230, and 312; Fogaras vármegye Hivatalos Lapja 1914, 132; and Szebenvármegye Hivatalos Lapja 1914, 202 and 360.

51 A fictional name, but a typical one.

52 Magyar statisztikai közlemények, new series, 56 (Budapest, 1915), 725.

53 Gábor G. Kemény, ed., Iratok a nemzetiségi kérdés történetéhez Magyarországon a dualizmus korában [Documents on the history of the nationalities problem in Hungary in the Dualist era], vol. 4, 1903–1906 (Budapest, 1966), 229–30.

54 Nicolae Iorga, Neamul romănesc în Ardeal și în Țara Ungurească [The Romanian people in Transylvania and Hungary], vol. 1 (Bucharest, 1906), 201. On a demonstration in 1893 where, according to a Magyar observer, a speaker's attack on the regulation of first names (then still in the making) received general acclaim from his Romanian peasant audience, Kemény, ed., vol. 2, 1892–1900 (Budapest, 1956), 109.

55 Kálmán Szily, A magyar nyelvújítás szótára a kedveltebb képzők és képzésmódok jegyzékével [Dictionary of the Hungarian language reform with a list of its favorite suffixes and types of word formation], vol. 1 (Budapest, 1902), 172.

56 For an analysis of the top–down spread of new, nationally motivated first names among Ruthenians in Habsburg Galicia, see Hrytsak, Jaroslav, “History of Names: A Case of Constructing National Historical Memory in Galicia, 1830–1930s,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 49, no. 2 (2001): 163–77Google Scholar. On the belated trends of Estonian and Turkish national names, see Annika Hussar, “Changes in Naming Patterns in 19th Century Estonia: Discarding the Names of Parents and Godparents,” in Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact, ed. Wolfgang Ahrens, Sheila Embleton, and André Lapierre (Toronto, 2009), 519–26; and Gürpınar, Doğan, “What Is in a Name? The Rise of Turkic Personal Male Names in Turkey (1908–38),” Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 5 (2012): 689–706 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 My calculation derives from a database containing personal data of almost all Romanian high-school graduates from the Kingdom of Hungary. The database was created in the framework of the research project elites08, funded from a European Research Council Advanced Team Leadership Grant. I am indebted to Prof. Victor Karády for making it available for the purpose of my research.

58 Ștefan Pașca, Nume de persoane și nume de animale în țara Oltului [Personal and animal names in the Land of Făgăraș] (Bucharest, 1936), 40; Sextil Pușcariu, Spiţa unui neam din Ardeal [The descent of a Transylvanian family], ed. and annot. Magdalena Vulpe (Cluj-Napoca, 1998), 46; and Vasile Todinca and Mihaela Bulc, Lumea satului românesc în răspunsuri la chestionarele Muzeului Limbii Române din Cluj (Zona Bihorului) [The world of the Romanian village in the responses to the questionnaire of the Museum of the Romanian Language in Kolozsvár/Cluj/Klausenburg (Bihor/Bihar region)] (Cluj-Napoca, 2012), 390.

59 Kinga Frojimovics, “Jewish Naming Customs in Hungary from the Turn of the Twentieth Century until the Holocaust,” paper presented at the 23rd International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, 20–25 July 2003, Washington, DC.

60 Miklós Bartha, Összegyüjtött munkái [Collected works], vol. 3 (Budapest, 1910), 484. (The text was originally published in 1900.)

61 His family name is sometimes spelled Joanovics, but he never signed it in the Romanian fashion as Ioanovici; D[umitru] Braharu, Un colaborator al lui Șaguna: Secretarul de stat Gheorghe Ioanovici de Dulĕu și Valea Mare [One of Șaguna's collaborators: Secretary of State Gheorghe Joannovics] (Cluj-Napoca, 1932), 43.

62 Braharu; Balassa, József, “Joannovics György,” Magyar Nyelvőr 38, no. 4 (1909): 145–47Google Scholar; and Jakabffy, Elemér, “A Banat (Bánság) magyar társadalmának kialakulása a XIX. század folyamán” [The formation of Magyar society in the Banat during the nineteenth century], Magyar Kisebbség 19 (1940): 205–18 and 228–37, at 234Google Scholar.

63 On the ideology of this “New Orthology,” see Béla G. Németh, “A századvégi Nyelvőr-vita: A népies provincializmus kialakulásához” [The Nyelvőr debate at the fin de siècle: On the emergence of Populist parochialism], in Mű és személyiség: Irodalmi tanulmányok [Work and personality: Literary studies] (Budapest, 1970), 465–520.

64 György Joannovics, Adalékok a magyar szóalkotás kérdéséhez [Contributions to the question of new word coinage] (Pest, 1870); and idem, Értsük meg egymást: A neologia és orthologia ügyében [Let's get it right: About neology and orthology] (Budapest, 1881).

65 MTA Kézirattár RAL 440/1892.

66 See also the table at the end of the present article.

67 Interestingly, yearbooks of Hungarian high schools made an even wider use of this method than Joannovics, which suggests that such forms were actually supported by some consensus of usage.

68 Alexandru Cristureanu, Aspecte ale onomasticii româneşti în secolele al XIX-lea şi al XX-lea, influenţa curentului “latinist” în domeniul numelor proprii [Aspects of Romanian onomastics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the influence of the “Latinist” current in the realm of proper names] (Cluj-Napoca, 2006), 22; Oallde, 89–90; and Pașca, 40.

69 Justyna B. Walkowiak, “A Name Policy and Its Outcome: Programmatic Names in the Nineteenth-Century Province of Posen,” paper presented at the 24th ICOS International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, 5–9 September 2011, Barcelona.

70 Libertatea 3/16 September 1905. A host of bovine names of Hungarian origin enjoyed wide currency among Romanian and Saxon peasants. Buffalo names have seldom aroused the interest of ethnographers, but Vireag turns up as a frequent Romanian name for cattle cows in a questionnaire from 1921 from Lugașu de Jos/Alsólugos/Nižný Lugaš, and (pronounced Wirag) it was also a popular Saxon name for cows, at least according to an 1895 treatise on Hungarian loanwords in the Transylvanian Saxon dialects; Todinca and Bulc, 399; and Julius Jacobi, “Magyarische Lehnworte im Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischen,” Programm des evang. Gymnasiums A.B. in Schässburg und der damit verbundenen Lehranstalten zum Schlusse des Schuljahres 1894/95 (Schässburg [Sighișoara], 1895), 1–39, at 39.

71 MTA Kézirattár RAL 6/1899.

72 Decree 55.093/1899 of the minister of the interior, in Magyarországi rendeletek tára 34 (1900), vol. 1, 17.

73 On today's incongruous regulations and official practices of personal name use, de Varennes, Fernand and Kuzborska, Elżbieta, “Human Rights and a Person's Name: Legal Trends and Challenges,” Human Rights Quarterly 37 (2015): 977–1023 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 I indicate the forms given in the publication, but I have changed their spelling into modern Romanian. The asterisked forms appear for the first time in the second edition.

75 In earlier practice, usually translated as Demeter or Döme.

76 Tivadar being a freshly resurrected first name; Teodor or Tódor had been more frequently used for translating Toader.

77 Contrary to contemporary belief, Kolos, a romantic resurrection of a medieval name, originally stood for Nicolaus and not for Claudius.

78 According to Nicolae A. Constantinescu, Dic ționar onomastic romînesc [Romanian dictionary of onomastics] (Bucharest, 1963), Iordache and its related forms go back to Gheorghie.

79 Although Rezső was coined on the basis of Rogerius, its usage had by that time shifted to correspond to Rudolf.