THE HUNGARIANIZATION OF SURNAMES AND NATIONAL ROMANTICISM

During the 19th and 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of people submitted requests to the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior in order for their surnames to be officially altered. Many reasons can underlie such changes of surnames. Those reasons can also apply in conjunction (intention of or pressure for assimilation, abandoning a name of foreign shape or unpleasant meaning, 'gaining' a name of a more elegant, nicer, or more Hungarian-sounding prestige, religious, ideological, or career-related motives, etc.). Individual components of compound names can be semantic group forming entities separately, too. The paper sketches groups of assumed names evoking the figurative/symbolic world of romanticism, with special emphasis on the glorious past and on positive properties of one's human or national character.