In Serbian, the village is known as Banatski Despotovac or Банатски Деспотовац (formerly also Ernestovac / Ернестовац), in Hungarian as Ernőháza, and in German as Ernsthausen.

[2] On 8 December 1888 the newly built Gothic style Roman Catholic church was inaugurated (it was subsequently razed by the communists in 1945).

Sepp Janko, chairman of the Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund (Danube Swabian German Cultural Association), a fascist collaborationist who fled to Argentina, where he died, was born here in 1905.

[citation needed] From 1941 to 1944, the village was under Axis occupation and was part of the Banat autonomous region within German-occupied Serbia.

After prison camps were dissolved (in 1948), most of the remaining German population left Yugoslavia in subsequent decades, mainly because of economic reasons.