Hungarian Toponyms in Slovakia – a Source of Conflict

Gizella SZABÓMIHÁLY

Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa, Nitra

(gszabomihaly@ukf.sk)

In the Kingdom of Hungary, at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries a standardization of Hungarian names of cities took place. After the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, all cities, towns and villages that became part of the new country were assigned Slovak names, including towns and villages with Hungarian population which had no Slovak name till then. The towns and villages with the proportion of Hungarian population over 20% were also assigned an official Hungarian name (in many cases it differed from the previously standardized form). Between 1948 and 1994 all towns and villages had only Slovak official names, the Hungarian names were allowed to be used only unofficially.

After the political changes in 1989 the Act of on Indication of Settlements in the Language of National Minorities (1994, amended in 2011) made it possible for the communities in which at least 20% of the population belongs to national minorities to use bilingual place name plates at the beginnings and ends of the towns and villages. In the appendix to the law there is a list of approximately 500 towns and villages with their official Hungarian names; at least one fifth of them differs from the name form ascertained during Hungarian standardization.

At the same time, in the 1990’s both in Hungary and in Slovakia several publications where issued with the aim to identify the old Hungarian standardized names and the present-day official names in the regions which before 1918 belonged to Hungary, but after the World War I were attached to the neighbouring countries. These publications use the old standardized Hungarian forms. Since these books are used also in Slovakia (e.g. by journalists working for newspapers and magazines), the names of more than one hundred HS towns and villages in South-Slovakia occur in more than one variants.

The occurrence of variants and the uncertain status of some of them cause a lot of problems; among others it makes the identification of the town or village more difficult. A self-evident solution to this problem seems to be an elaboration, publication and dissemination of a list of towns and villages with only one official Hungarian name. However, this variability is a problem only for the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, and not for the Slovak or Hungarian officials. The Hungarian authorities (and Hungarian public in general) is satisfied with the official names coming from the Hungarian standardization. A common list which would be acceptable for all the interested parties, i.e. for the Slovaks, for the Hungarians in Hungary and for the Hungarian community in Slovakia could be elaborated only by cooperation of competent authorities, namely the official commissions for the standardization of geographical nomenclature in both countries. It must, however, be noted, that experts from the Hungarian community in Slovakia are not present either in the Slovak, or in the Hungarian commission.