Does the name of Hungary’s next PM really translate as Peter Hungarian?

In the weeks since the Tisza Party’s landslide victory at the Hungarian elections, many non-Hungarians have wondered about the name of the party’s chairman who will soon be Hungary’s next Prime Minister. Does his name really translate as Peter Hungarian? – is a question that has been repeatedly asked. The short answer is that it indeed does, but it should be added that this is not nearly as unique or special as some might think. A quick overview of the history of Hungarian surnames will likely shed some light on why this is so.

The Hungarian state was founded in 1000 A.D., with the crowning of the country’s first king, St. Stephen (Szent István), who also introduced Christianity to the country. However, just as in most of Europe, surnames were still not used to identify people at this time. While in other parts of the continent, the practice was gradually introduced between the 11th and the 14th century, Hungary didn’t start using surnames until somewhat later, between the 15th-16th century.

One of the things contributing to this was the change in the traditionally given first names. Prior to the adoption of Christianity, most Hungarian commoners were given names derived from some natural element, an animal, a natural phenomenon, or perhaps a personal trait (such as Farkas (wolf) Kerecsen (saker falcon) Turul (a mythological bird) Bátor (courageous), or Hajnal (dawn)). With the spread of Christianity, however, this practice began to change, as the Church offered Christian names at baptism, allowing commoners to choose the names of saints. As a result, from the time of St. Stephen onward, the number of Peters, Johns, and Pauls in Hungarian settlements began to increase.

It soon became necessary to find a way to distinguish between multiple residents sharing the same first name in a community. Thus, if, for example, a village had three people named János, each of them soon ended up with a nickname. This was usually an adjective describing the person (nagy, kis (big, little)), or their profession (kovács (blacksmith) or szabó (tailor)), but other traits (e.g. sánta (limping), including the name of the place the individual was originally from (pécsi, komáromi) were also used.

These nicknames, derived from various characteristics and placed before first names eventually evolved into official surnames or family names during the 15th and 16th centuries. As society was becoming ever more class-based and income-divided, a more accurate record of people—along with their property, which they could pass on to their descendants—was not only needed among the nobility but also among the common people.

The first to adopt the practice were members of the nobility though, who started officially taking on the names of the estates they had been granted by the king as their family names. One of the best-known examples of this is János Hunyadi, (of Rise of the Raven TV series-fame) whose family received the county of Hunyad along with Hunadoara (in modern-day Romania).

Under the new naming system—which became widespread in Hungary in the early 1600s— surnames based on place of origin were extremely common at first, because many people migrated to new settlements where they ended up being identified by their place of origin. This is how the last names Budai (from Buda) or Szegedi (from Szeged) came about, for example. As people of various ethnic backgrounds moved around the country, surnames marking an individual’s or a family’s ethnicity also became common: Horváth (Croat), Tóth (Slovak), Rácz (Serb) and Német (German), and indeed, Magyar (Hungarian) – all of which are still around today. To this day, surnames derived from names of ethnic groups make up 20 percent of Hungarian surnames and as such, are the second most common type of surname in the Hungarian language.

Being the 20th most frequent surname (among the 100 most common ones) in Hungary, Péter Magyar’s family name is not overly unusual within the country’s borders. So much so that during the recent elections, there was another candidate also called Péter Magyar, who – although previously connected to Fidesz, ran as an independent in Vas county. (He received a minimal number of votes, which proved just enough to help Fidesz’s candidate to victory in the constituency instead of Tisza’s.)

In the past, the makeup of the Hungarian population was not as homogenous as it is today, and, especially during the time when Hungary was part of the Habsburg empire, members of various ethnic groups moved around a lot. As mentioned above, a surname like “Magyar” may have been given to the next prime minister’s ancestors in a community where people from (an)other ethnic group(s) were a majority and theirs was one of the few Hungarian families. Additionally, in the middle of the 19th century, and especially around the late 19th-early 20th century, changing surnames that did not sound Hungarian enough became prevalent, especially in the case of Slavic, German, and Jewish sounding surnames, which could also be a plausible explanation.

And while we don’t know exactly how and when his ancestors took on this name, what is for sure known about the country’s next prime minister is that he hails from a family of lawyers: his father, István Magyar, is a lawyer from Szombathely, while his mother comes from a long line of lawyers and public servants. His maternal grandfather was a former judge, well-known and popular throughout the country because he spent years as a legal expert on a public television program entitled Legal Cases. Here, he answered viewers’ questions about legal difficulties they faced and gave legal advice. He was well-liked on account of his ability to explain and clarify difficult legal issues in plain language so that average folks could understand them and decide on a way forward.

Now, many Hungarians have similar expectations, but on a much larger scale from Péter Magyar in the season ahead: to review and modify the harmful changes to the legal system introduced by the previous administration, and to put the country back on a path that will finally allow it to move forward.