Névadás és névhasználat a németországi magyar szórványban

Absztrakt

Name-giving practices and the use of names of the Hungarian minority living in Germany

This paper observes the name-giving and name-using practices of the Hungarian minority living in Germany, and tries to find an answer to the question whether the political changes that took place in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 and 1990 had any effect on those norms. The corpus studied in the paper consists of the first names of 381 persons belonging to the second or third generation of Hungarians living in Germany, as well as some information about the name-giving and name-using practices of these people. Names under discussion can be classified into four categories on the basis of their types: 1. Hungarian-sounding names and names of Hungarian origin; 2. one Hungarian-sounding or Hungarian name out of two first names; 3. (international) names of foreign origin which are popular in Hungary as well; 4. names of German or other (non-Hungarian) origin. The author points out that the practices of name choice and the motivations behind them in these generations are quite similar to those of the first generation of the Hungarian minority group in Germany and those of Hungarians living in the home country.