Egy józsefvárosi bérház női cselédeinek keresztnevei a 19–20. században

Absztrakt

First names of female servants in a Józsefváros (Josefstadt) apartment building in the 19th–20th centuries   

The paper discusses the 19th–20th-century first names of female servants in an apartment building in Budapest compared to the female first names used by the families that employed them. Sources were register books listing the inhabitants of the building between 1899 and 1947. Female servants arrived to the capital from over 40% of the counties in the country at the time, while families employing them were mostly from Budapest. The most frequent first names in the register books coincide with the top 10 percent of first names in the country-wide statistics of the era. The assumption that mainly young unmarried female servants were listed in the register books by hypocoristic names has clearly not been justified. A comparison of the first names of the female servants and those of the female members of their employers’ families displays the approximate similarity of the most frequent first names. Differences between the two name stocks can only be observed with respect to female servants’ informal nicknames. The final conclusion of the paper is that first names borne exclusively by female servants did not exist.