My intention here is to help the English speaker and reader make sense of Hungarian place names so that they will feel more familiar. You will see some of these word "roots" all over the maps!
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OLD MAPS ONLINE - HUNGARY (Yes, yet another map resource.)
This is a list of root words.
HAZA - Home
HAZ - House
HELY - Place
FALU - Village
FALUSKA - Hamlet (Suggests very few inhabitants, maybe around a bend or in a valley, smaller than a village)
KISVAROS - Small town
NAGYVAROS - Big town
VAROS - City or Town
UTCA - Street
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PATAK - Creek (Smaller waterway than a stream)
FOLYAM - Stream
FOLYO - River
TO - Lake (accent over o)
OCEAN - Ocean
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SATOR - Tent (Used to describe the look of a hill or mountain.)
PUSZTA - Villa or Big House (at least compared to the average house in the neighborhood.)
KASTELY - Castle (Applied also to large houses. Does not mean there is a fortress or moat.)
ISTALLO - Barn
TEMPLOM - Church
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UJ - New
REJI - Old
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MEGYE - County
Note about names of colors for settlements, rivers, and so on... Sometimes places were named, not because they looked white or black or red or yellow, but because the color indicated a direction. I realize this could be map-centric. White would be north, Black would be south. So for instance The Black Sea is South of where?
FEHER - White or Light Color
FEKETE - Black or Dark Color
PIROS - Red
SARGA - Yellow
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All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips
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