Századok – 2009

TANULMÁNYOK - Farkas Tamás - Maitz Péter: Nyelvi nacionalizmus és német családnevek a 19. századi Magyarországon. A névmagyarosítások nyelvi-ideológiai hátteréről III/565

reviewing the main characteristics of name changing, it deals with the wider socio-linguistic background of name using, before all with regard to the communities within which German names predominated. Departing from the semantic structure of the family name, it shows how and why a family name of a given linguistic character in contemporary Hungary could become the tool of a linguistic ideology, namely of linguistic nationalism, thus leading to the transformation of linguistic attitudes and of social identities, and on the final account the need for the Magyarisation of foreignsounding family names. It characterises the movement of Magyarisation as a behaviour typical of mobile groups which were involved in the process of assimilation in general, and describes the esthetic, functional and linguistic principles of name changes, which are also firmly rooted in contemporary mentality and attitudes, and constitute as such a possible part of the general explanation of changes of family names in the 19th century.