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Showing posts from December, 2015

The Original Surname of Zsa Zsa Gabor's Family

Very few people, if any, know much about Zsa Zsa Gabor's paternal side of the family. I had previously conducted research on Zsa Zsa's maternal side of the family several years ago ( Article 1 , and Article 2 ). The marriage record of Zsa Zsa Gabor's parents yielded the necessary information to continue researching further back on the paternal side of her family. Not many know that her family's surname was not originally Gábor, and that her father changed his surname to assimilate and become more Hungarian. The entire family was Jewish. The marriage of Farkas Miklós Grün and Janka Tilleman occurred on 13 September 1914 in Budapest, District VII. As determined from previous research, Janka was born 30 September 1896 to Jónás Hers(ch) Tilleman and Chawe Feige Reinharz. Farkas Miklós Grün is listed as a merchant who was born 19 September 1881 to the late Salamon Grün and Rozália Kluger. Notes were later recorded on the marriage record explaining that Farkas Miklós Grün...

Hungarian Genealogy: Research Tip #13

The theme of today's tip is: Hungarian Surname Origins & Meanings The origins and meanings of Hungarian surnames can date back to well before the creation of the Kingdom of Hungary, and can be broken down into several categories. Patronymic Patronymic surnames are derived from the given name of male ancestors. They can appear several different ways in Hungary and are easily distinguishable. One variation they appear as is simply a male's given name, such as György, Péter, Mihály, Antal. Any given name could be a surname. Another variation is slightly different in that it includes the suffix of -fi, -ffi, -fy and -ffy. This suffix, which as you see can has many spelling variations, means 'son' and when combined with a given name creates surnames very recognizable to English speaking countries. Examples of these surnames are Péterfi/Péterfy (Peterson), Jánosfi/Jánosfy (Johnson), Pálfi/Pálfy (Paulson). A sub-category of patronymic surnames originates from th...