NOBILITY or not, here are some things to watch for.
First, the same people on various records may be noted as noble on some records and not others. It may be because noble heritage meant more to the people in a smaller settlement than a populous one, because a priest wants to honor someone as a traditional person, or because someone insisted.
Remember that a noble woman who married down kept her status, but her children didn't inherit it. She got her status because her mother married a noble. So, you might go back another generation or so to find who is the noble father.
In my personal research I have a man who stepped up to marry a pregnant noble woman who was widowed. Luckily, I descend from their second child. I have not found her first marriage or the death of that husband to know for how long she was widowed and now believe she must have moved to be nearer family in her disadvantaged state or moved to marry.
What other evidence could there be? Names. Common people tend to use and reuse common given names. They also gave their child one name. In Hungarian records I find quite a few twins. (In a Galician town now in Poland but up against the Slovak border - in a Catholic Church record I recently read - I was surprised to see not only twins but triplets and even quadruples born - this before fertility drugs! I was sure that this was so because the priest wrote in Latin that they were twins and so on. So be careful if when you see two, three, or four names you don't assume nobility. But yes, the more names a child is given at baptism the higher the nobility could be. I would say four was typical for the child of a count and countess. Currently Prince Charles (Great Britain) has only four given names but I've seen records of nobles with twelve names (not including titles) and the names usually honor relatives. Ernst August, Princess Caroline of Monaco's German House of Hanover husband, has twelve. Prince Albert II of Monaco has four.
Into the 18th century noble women used the surname given at birth all their lives. I find it easy to follow in records because women are recorded with that maiden name at birth and marriage and often death too.
Maria Anna is two names. Marianna is one.
Be careful of online genealogy charts that list noble families and their children into the present day. First no one should be listing living people by name on genealogy charts on the internet, in databases, and so on without that living person's explicit permission. And if it's not your personal family and you don't know them to ask them what the heck are you doing? It's an invasion of their privacy and could endanger their security and peace of mind. Also these websites and charts are most often without documentation and are not genealogy. Last, they seem to not have full names going back in time.
C 2021 Magyar American BlogSpot
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
To pull up the series, click on the tag, Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family
