Hungarian Births Database

The JewishGen Hungarian Special Interest Group (H-SIG) is transcribing Jewish vital records from LDS microfilms, including birth records.  The original data were created by rabbis in each community (or for small communities, in centralized district registers) as required by the Emperor.  These records are handwritten in German, Hebrew, or Hungarian, and generally date between 1800-1914.

Database Fields

The database includes the following fields:

• Name — Surname and Given Name(s) of the Child.
• Date of Birth — Birth Date of the Child, in format Day-Month-Year.
• Sex — Gender of the Child: “M” for male, “F” for female.
• Father — Father’s Given Name – the first name of the child’s father.
  In the rare cases where the child’s surname is not the same as the father’s, a note is added in the Comments field.
• Mother — Mother’s Given Name and Maiden Name.
• Town Registered / Record Number — The purpose of the record number is to aid in finding the original record on the microfilm or other source of vital records.
  We have standardized on the format PPP-NN, where PPP represents the page number within a microfilm or volume, and NN represents the item number on that page.
  Some of our older transcriptions may have the record number in the format YYYY-NN (where YYYY=the year of the record, and NN=the record number from that year associated with the record), or simply the number associated with a record (for small towns).
• Járás / Meyge — The District (járás) and County (megye) of the place of birth.
• Town Born — The town or village where the child was born.
• Comments — Other useful information in the record, such as: names of witnesses, godparents, mohel or midwife; the mother and/or father’s town of birth; the father's occupation; notes on illegitimacy (which refers to the fact that parents did not have a civil marriage); an indication if the child died (and the date); etc.
• Source — LDS Microfilm Number, used to order the microfilm at the LDS Family History Centers, or other source of this record.

Contents of the Database

Notes on Searching the Database

In addition to the usual search of surnames and towns, you can use the global text search of all fields to find all entries for a particular county (megye), given name, or LDS microfilm number.

If you are searching for a hyphenated town name or county, you must enter only the name before the hyphen or after the hyphen, but not both.  At this time, the search engine is not capable of handling hyphenated names.  JewishGen technicians are working on this problem.

It should be understood by all researchers that these are index files, and no attempt was made to replicate all the data in the original registers.  Researchers should go to the source record, wherever possible, to obtain additional information such as witnesses, notes by the registrar, and other information.