Szirmay Gábor: Az ugocsai szirmai Szirmay család története (Régi magyar családok 7. Debrecen, 2007)
Abstract
and more than forty manuscripts, claims respect despite of the controversies of his personality. Among the contemporary members of the Szirmay family from Ugocsa, László Szirmay Kalos is a dominant character in present day technical culture. Being an Academic Doctor, and a candidate in technical sciences he is one of the most respected experts in computer graphics. Most of the properties of the Szirmay family from Ugocsa were located in Ugocsa and Szatmár counties. Only the historian Antal Szirmay had bigger estates in Zemplén county. The Szirma village in Ugocsa county was the centre of the Szirmay family estates between 1251 and 1944. Unfortunately, floods on the river Tisza ruined the attractive mansions of the Szirmay family mentioned in several documents and lawsuits, and the family graveyard located in the village Szirma shared the same destiny. The Szirmay family from Ugocsa has several burial places in different parts of Hungary (in Budapest, Miskolc, Sárospatak, Uszka, etc.), but there are also some in other parts of the world, for instance in the USA, Slovakia, Austria or France. The family archive passed into Antal Szirmay 's hands at the end of the i8 ,h century. Unfortunately, no further information is available about what has happened to it later on. However, the Szirmay Kalos family archive has survived historical times. The author tells us the story of the survival of the letter box belonging to the Szirmay Kalos family. Moreover, some of its valuable and well-preserved documents are also presented in the book. The oldest one is a charter from 1397. Among the medieval charters preserved in the Hungarian National Archives one can find numerous documents mentioning the Szirmay family from Ugocsa. Visk (in Máramaros county) is located at a distance of 65 kilometres from the village Szirma, the ancient estate of the family Szirmay from Ugocsa, where they lived until 1944. In Visk several families called Szirmay have lived from the 1700s up to the present. They might belong to the family Szirmay from Ugocsa, however at present there is no evidence of their origin at our disposal. In the family board of the Szirmays from Visk, there are 141 persons, including 19 living members. The family name Szirmay, like the majority of Hungarian family names, is derived from the name of a settlement, that of Szirma. The name Szirma is probably not of Hungarian origin, it is most probably a Slovakian name. From the 16 th century it became general that the ruler in power conferred a title of nobility to noblemen. The Szirmays from Borsod used the title 'Szirmay of Szirma and Szirmabesenyő', the Szirmays from Ugocsa used 'Szirmay of Szirma'. In Hungary changing a family name became popular from the 1800s. Thousands of families with foreign family names applied to change their names at the Ministry of the Interior. Between 1815 and 1956 there were three hundred thousand applicants. Before 1893, 31 heads of family applied for the name Szirmai. Many of them deliberately changed the ending "i" into "y" later on. That is why one can find other people called Szirmay, whose name is written in the same way as that of the Szirmay families from Borsod, Ugocsa and Visk, but they do not belong to the aforementioned families.
