1850. ÉVI ERDÉLYI NÉPSZÁMLÁLÁS (1994)

HELYNÉVMUTATÓ

as a source since by localities and within the broader time limits the smaller or greater errors and inconsequences - without which population censuses and population conscriptions of that time cannot be even imagined - will be more conspicuous. For the moment no reliable information is available with regard to the duration of the conducting of the population census. Since the instruction stressing the urgency of the work was prepared already by early April,it is probable that the enumeration was generally completed by the summer of 1850 and it was only the processing and the summarization of the data and the correction of possible errors which remained for the next year. This is proved also by the dates of the various district and area sheets. So, the summaries cf the sub-areas of Nagyhalmagy, of Korosbanya and of Brad were ready, respectively, by already August 31, December 8 and December 29, 1850 while the summary sheet of the district of Gyulafehervar was complied only by February 19, 1851. The 8 summary table is dated March 10, 1851. q Though the final results of population census appeared soon in the Austrian statistical publications and its major data were professionally processed not long after the population census by the Nagyszeben scholar E. A. Bielz,

1

0 the material by locality lines of the original survey remained unpublished in the series of the Statistical Tables of the Transylvanian National Government Agency Archives where it was discovered, in 1974, by our collegue Xaszlo Csanyi from the Archives of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in the course of his searching for original sources.

1

1 The publication has been dragging on for a long time but now, owing to it, the reasearcher will receive in his hand such series of figures which constitute an important eye in the clvain connecting the already published material of the first population census with the later results of the official population censuses, with this publication an old debt is hoped to have been settled. Publishung the source materials efforts were made that nothing from the valuable series of figures get lost. For this reason, taking into consideration the possibilities of publishing, only the data regarding the ten years of age of the men of military age, the smaller nationality groups, the two rubrics of those absent (males and females) and the breakdown of foreigners in the localities were united, respectively. The purpose of the work was to publish the data of the population census whereby processing the source data was not aimed at. Even so, the the checking of the data required much energy. Since in the original summaries smaller or greater errors were encountered rather frequently, the additions of the figure columns had to be repeated comletely which included also the verification of the inner relationships of the figure columns. (The breakdowns by nationality groups, religions and sex had to be equal to the figure with regard to the size of the legal population.

1^) When correcting the errors the accuracy of the partial data was checked first and the necesarry correction of the totals was performed only if no error had been discovered with regard to the partial data. All these correction resulted only in negligible differences compared to the original totals but, in order to ensure the accuracy of numerical calculations, had to be performed nevertheless. An equally serious task was the identification of the names of localities, it was not only the frequently distorted German forms of names which caused problems but the great number of localities having the same name since - in the new framework of the administrative division put into effect in the Bach-era - it was sometimes extremely difficult to identify them and find their respective former data. Besides, there were only few sources with regard to ' Transylvania at our disposal. Besides the works of that time by Bielz, Kovari, Benko, Lenk, Sollner,

1'' the extremely rich and detailed compilation by Wagner}

4the work by Suciu indispensable in establishing 15 the present forms of the names were of help to us alongside with some gazetteers and maps which served as the main references in identifying locality names.

1® According to the generally accepted rules of source publication, locality names were generally taken over in t;heir original forms. The original Roumanian and German forms of names were preserved (the German names of the Hungarian localities in the Saxon administrative areas too) and changes were made only there where it the Szekely land or in other areas with Hungarian populations the Hungarian locality names were added, without reason, German anteriors (Ober, Unter, Klein, Gross) or where the Hungarian ortographic rules were changed (instead of s - sch, instead of cz - tz was written, or the Hungarian long vowels were replaced by two respective short vowels. In the index of locality names, at the end of the volume, both the last Hungarian and the present-day Roumanian locality names are given following the alphabetic order of the original forms, consequently, the localities can always be identified. The publication of the data goes in the alphabetic order of the locality names of the sub-areas whereby possible incosequences of the original sources were eliminated. when publishing the data the regional division at the time of the population census was truthfully followed. It significantly differed both from the former and later county divisions as well as from the regional division 190.