My great-grandparents Tivadar Nagy and Borbala Both shown in front of their home in Székelykerestúr sometime in the 1960s. The woman standing is Tivadar’s niece.
This page from my parents photo album from 1983 showed that the place was showing its age.
Have you ever seen a tree in the clouds? Or a cloud of names in a tree?
Direct Line Ancestors
A friend posted a link to a list of the most popular Hungarian surnames (2006). In the top spot is Nagy, the ‘Smiths’ of Hungary. Although, to be accurate,while Smith is the most common English language surname in Hungarian it translates to Kovács, which ranks #2 in Hungarian popularity.
In our direct ancestry line these surnames were ranked in the top 100;
Nagy #1 Tóth #3 Kis #7 Mólnar #8
This tree word-cloud shows all the known surnames in our direct line.
And that’s the Big (Nagy) and Small (Kis) of it.
The Family Tree/Családfa menu option at the top of the page now links to a new page with descendant and ancestor charts for the four branches of the family. The link to the interactive family tree is there as well. 
I like this family tree format from Legends software but it is limited to just 3 generations. Last month I taped together all the ancestor and descendant charts and it was about 12 feet long. Hope the links on this new page make it easier to see the big picture.
Brigitte is our little sister that left us too soon. I love this photo of her but it makes me sad.
János Varga Nagy and Julianna Szalteleki were married in Székelykeresztúr parish on November 27, 1876. Janos was a 26 year old bachelor, son of Roman Catholic parents Joseph Varga Nagy and Julianna Szasz. The bride was a 23 year old single woman, daughter of Zsigmond Szalteleki and Susanna Mezei, both Unitarians. Julianna was born in Jobbagyfalva, 50 miles north of Szekelykerestur. Continue reading
1767-1848 Székelykeresztúr
Several months ago I ran across an article titled: Genealogy Research in Romania is not Impossible. The article then went on to explain why it is close to impossible. For decades the Mormon Church has been copying vital records from countries all over the world. The older records are on microfilm, but they have many ongoing projects to convert to digital images, index the records with the help of volunteers and make the records available online. This service is free, and priceless. I spend many hours looking through records for many parts of Hungary and surrounding areas.
Hungarians typically selected names for their children from a rather short list. In most families a son was named for his father and a daughter for her mother. Other children were often named for grandparents or aunts or uncles. Often when a child died very young, that child’s name was later given to another baby.
Anna
Saints names were popular, and for boys, names of famous Hungarians especially kings. Church and civil records were often recorded in Latin so the names were listed in the Latin version.
Among the 54 direct ancestors identified in our family tree, the most popular name for girls was 3 for variations of Rosalie, Rózsa and Rosina.
Other popular girls names, with 2 each were; Anna, Katalin (Catherine), Erzsébet (Elizabeth), Eva, Julianna, Maria and Theresa (Teréz, Terézia). Continue reading
Édes-Orbán Family 