The use of personal names in Hungarian mourning songs

Abstract

The use of personal names in Hungarian mourning songs  

The paper examines whether Sándor Solymossy was right in his assumption that the function of personal names in Hungarian mourning songs was to conjure up the dead person’s soul. The author analyses the personal names appearing in the volume of “A magyar népzene tára [The Collection of Hungarian Folk Music]” that is dedicated to mourning songs. The name of the dead person turns up in approximately 30% of the texts, and significant differences can be observed as far as the degree of relationship is concerned. Regarding name forms, most frequently the full or the Christian name appears, standing usually at the beginning of the mourning song and reappearing again and again in the text. The assumed magic function of the name in the text is put in question by several factors. In the observed songs from the 20th century, the role of the name is rather to recall and identify. Names of other persons, dead or alive, though fewer in number, also appear with different functions in the songs. Using the collected data, the author draws conclusions about the relations between names and humans as well.