Hungarian Genealogy

Luckily, there are plenty of resources available online for researching your Hungarian family history. This provides a great place to begin learning about the names, dates, and occupations of your ancestors as well as discovering who their neighbors and friends were along with many small details of their life. Having these details is both personally rewarding and helps a genealogist like myself put the pieces together more easily and seamlessly.

Before starting your research, you should be aware of some of the expected issues you could face, including “Name Changes”, “Birthplace Errors”, and the importance of “Religious Affiliations”.

What name did your ancestor use in Hungary?

Many Hungarian names have an English version. Lajos is Luis and Katalin is Kate. The officers at Ellis Island might have registered you grandfather’s surname as Newman instead of Neumann.  In Israel people many times upon arriving to the country started to use their Hebrew name and some of them even translated their surnames into Hebrew. The surname Farkas became Zeev in Hebrew.

Where were your ancestors born?

There are many emigration records available where you can find the place of origin of your ancestor. However, sometimes they are difficult to read and many times incorrect or misspelled the due to the lack of geographical knowledge concerning the names of small or esoteric places at the registration offices.

What was the religion of your ancestor?

Civil registration started in 1895 in Hungary. Any prior vital records have to be searched according to religious affiliation since it was usually the churches and synagogues that maintained population data in prior periods.

You can read more about it here: Resources 

Reading the handwritten documents can be challenging and genealogical research is very time consuming.

When professional help is needed, I’m here to help you with your Hungarian genealogical research needs.