Dictionary of Family Names in the Visegrad Countries

About the dictionary

Briefly about the Dictionary of Family Names in the Visegrad Countries (DFNVC)

This website is a multilingual online dictionary of the most common surnames of the so-called Visegrad Group countries, i.e. Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The entries on the family names and the further content of the dictionary are available in English and the official language of the given country. The family names and their entries in the dictionary can be viewed and searched in various ways on the online platform.

The dictionary covers the 200 most common surnames and their most common variants in each of the four countries. The available sources vary slightly from country to country, but are equally representative of the family name stocks of the given countries. The family names presented in the dictionary are borne by a significant proportion of the population of each country.

The dictionary results from a collaborative effort by name researchers from all the four countries. The linguistic origins, methods of formation and etymologies of the family names have been  primarily based on the existing (i.e. onomastic) literature of each country. However, the joint processing of the family name stocks required a partial reconsideration of the literature, and in the description, the reconciliation of the somewhat different analysing practices of the different languages and countries as far as possible, which also required some compromises. Due to the differences in the sources used in particular countries (reference year and partly the nature of the source material), the name frequency data given in the dictionary provide information on the relative order and proportion of the names by the number of name bearers.

Different language versions of the dictionary can be accessed by clicking on the flag icon at the end of the menu bar at the top of the page.

Similar national flag icons can be seen next to each family name during searches, in the surname lists and at the top of the entries, indicating to which of the four countries the family name belongs. Flag icons can also be found next to the headwords of the entries, indicating the languages in which the descriptions are available. However, these icons cannot be used for language switching.

Names as headwords and less frequent variants

The headwords of the entries are the most common family names (from another aspect: variants of family names) in the family name stock of each country. The 200 most common family names per country are all given their own entries in the dictionary. This is the case even if there are pronunciation and/or spelling variants among each other or if exactly the same surname form from several Visegrad countries is included in the dictionary. Among the name variants that can be considered related to each other, only the male and female variants of the three Slavic-language countries (Czechia, Poland, Slovakia) were combined by country (this is not relevant for the Hungarian language). In this case, the male variants were listed as headwords and the number of name bearers were also added up. 

The rarer pronunciation and/or spelling variants of the 200 most common family names (i.e. of the main variants), which do not have their own entries but can be considered typical, are listed in the entries of their main variants. These rarer variants can also be searched in the dictionary, referring the user to the entries of the corresponding main variants. The main variants (i.e. names that serve as headwords) appear in block capitals everywhere in the dictionary, while the less frequent variants mentioned only within the entries appear with initial capital letters only.

The structure of an entry

The etymology of the family name

The linguistic origin of the family name can be found in the upper part of the entry next to the label Origin. Some family name forms within the name stock of a country may have been derived from several different languages in parallel, even independently of each other. The term of multiple origins indicates this fact.

It should be noted that family names of different linguistic origins can be found in the family name stock of a country; and vice versa: family names from a given language can be found in the family name stocks of several countries (with the same or slightly different spellings).

The Description part of the entry provides information on the linguistic origin of the given family name, its formation, and its etymological meaning/meanings.  

The type of the family name and the motivation for its formation

In the dictionary, the following typology to describe the presumed motivation(s) (understood as the reason for naming) for the formation of family names is used:

• Family name referring to the connection with the father or another ancestor by that name
• Family name referring to the place of residence, origin or estate
• Family name referring to some connection with an ethnic group
• Family name referring to an occupation, activity or social status
• Family name referring to internal or external characteristics, circumstances or event

An information box is provided next to the label Type at the upper part of the entry to indicate which of the above types a given family name belongs to. Some family names may have not only multiple origins but also multiple motivations; thus, they can be classified into several types. The possible motivations are discussed in more detail in the Description part of the entry.

It should be noted that in the case of similar family names in the surname stock of different languages or countries (e.g. family names derived from words of different languages but with the same meaning), similarly to their etymology, there can sometimes be some variation in the motives taken into account.

Sources of the family name stock and their frequency; representativeness of the content of the dictionary

Czechia: based on the data formerly provided by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic as of 2016. At present, the data (as of 2016) is indirectly available thanks to the webpage www.kdejsme.cz. Current data is not available. The family name stock processed as headwords (without the less frequent variants included in the dictionary only as references, listed at the entries of the main variants) is borne by more than 2 million people, i.e. about 20% of the population. 

Hungary: based on the data of the official population register (total population) as of 1 January 2007, which can be found in Mihály Hajdú's Családnevek enciklopédiája [Encyclopaedia of Family Names] (Budapest, 2010) and Újmagyarkori családneveink tára [Collection of Family Names from the Modern Hungarian Age] (Budapest, 2012). The family name stock processed as headwords (without the less frequent variants included in the dictionary only as references, listed at the entries of the main variants) is borne by more than 4 million people, i.e. about 41% of the population. 

Poland: based on the data of the official population register as of 27 January 2022, which can be found on the official government website https://dane.gov.pl/pl/search?q=nazwiska. The data, originally classified by gender, have been manually processed to create a ranking list. The family name stock processed as headwords (without the rarer variants included in the dictionary only as references, listed at the entries of the main variants) is borne by over 6 and a half million people, i.e. about 18% of the population.

Slovakia: Based on the data of the official population register (total population) of 1995. The database of Slovak surnames from 1995 is available on the website of the Slovak Academy of Sciences: ĎURČO, PETER et al. (1998): Databáza vlastných mien a názvov lokalít na Slovensku. Podklady k projektu Copernicus Programme, projekt COP-58: Onomastica – Copernicus Database. [Database of proper names and place names in Slovakia. Data of the Copernicus Programme project No. COP-58: Onomastica – Copernicus Database] CD ROM. Paris: ELRA. http://www.juls.savba.sk/durco_priezviska.html. The family name stock processed as headwords (without the rarer variants included in the dictionary only as references, listed at the entries of the main variants) is borne by close to 1 million people, i.e. about 17% of the population.

Bibliography

For the basic literature on personal names of the four countries, see the review article of our research team in Acta onomastica (Vol. 65, Issue 1, 2024).

For further information on the literature on the family names of each country or language mainly used or recommended, please consult the national language versions (Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak) of this page.