Hungarian is one of the few national languages in Europe to use the Eastern name order, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Khmer and some Basque nationalists.
][2] Some Hungarian surnames relate to professions like Szabó (tailor), Kovács (smith), Halász (fisher).
For example, common Hungarian surnames include Németh (German), Horváth (Croat), Tóth (Slav, Slovak[3]), Lengyel (Polish), Oláh (Romanian) and Rác/Rácz/Rátz (outdated term for Serb).
During the 19th and the early 20th centuries, people in the Kingdom of Hungary who were of non-Hungarian ethnicity, with Jewish, German or Slovak ancestry, were encouraged to adopt Hungarian surnames.
However, many Hungarians of German descent retained their original surnames like Horn, Deutsch, Staller, Keller, Rockenbauer, Hoffmann, etc.
[3] The origin of Hungarian names is closely related to the religious and dynastic history of the country.
When Hungary was under Habsburg rule and became influenced by Western European traditions, women became known by their husbands' names.
[citation needed] Now, the alternatives for a woman when she marries are as shown below (using the examples of Szendrey Júlia and Petőfi Sándor – Júlia and Sándor are their given names): The applicable law,[7] which used to give substantially different sets of options to women and men, was declared sexist and unconstitutional.
Applications are considered by the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences following a set of principles.
[11] Thus, names are approved if they are not derogatory or overly diminutive, can be written and pronounced easily, can be recognised as either male or female etc.
Approved names expand the official list, the newest edition of which is regularly published.
Many recent additions are foreign names, but they must be spelled following Hungarian phonetics: Jennifer becomes Dzsenifer or Joe becomes Dzsó.
In English language academic publishing, archiving and cataloguing, different manuals of style treat Hungarian names in different ways.
However, names of historical importance are generally translated and written in the Hungarian way: Kálvin János for John Calvin.
Names from languages using a different script (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, Greek etc.)