Naming practices concerning children of Hungarian mother tongue in minority and majority after 1989

Abstract

Naming practices concerning children of Hungarian mother tongue in minority and majority after 1989

This paper presents the results of an onomastic survey. The investigation, carried out among teenagers, examined the similarities and the differences of naming practices inside and beyond the borders of Hungary. The survey involving 600 children of Hungarian mother tongue suggests that the average frequency of given names in Hungary is higher than in Transylvania (Rumania) and in the Uplands (Slovakia), especially for boys. The practice of giving two forenames to children is the most popular in Transylvania. – Considering the motivation of giving a first name it has been observed that in the beginning of the 1990s, 15–20% of the boys and 5–10% of the girls inherited their names (mostly from the parent of the same sex, and less frequently from godparents or from grandparents), regardless of whether they were in majority or minority situations. – The derivation of the names displays similar distribution in the three locations: nearly 50% of the girls bear given names of ecclesiastical origin, 15–20% of them have names of (old) Hungarian origin, and 30–45% of them received foreign names borrowed recently. It is striking, however, that in Transylvania more than 60% of the boys bear "Hungarian" names, which is more than the quadruple of their distribution in Hungary. The author concludes that in Transylvania, choosing Hungarian given names can play an important role in preserving national identity. The distance between the mother-country and the region in question also influences the choice of given names; geographical neighbourhood breeds uniformity.