Hungarian Vital Records

Background

JewishGen.org is transcribing vital records of Hungarian Jewry from a variety of sources, including LDS microfilms, and digitized images of records from archives in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. 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.

As of August 2022, there are 841,834 records in the collection.

Database Fields

The database includes the following fields:

• Name — Surname and Given Name(s)
  • Birth Records: of the child
  • Death Records: of the deceased
  • Marriage Records: of both the bride and groom
• Date of Birth — Birth Date of the Child, in format Day-Month-Year.
• Date of Death — Death Date: Day-Month-Year.
• Date of Marriage — Marriage Date of the Bride and Groom: Day Month Year.
• Age — On Marriage Records; for both the bride and groom.
• Sex — Gender of the Child on birth records: “M” for male, “F” for female.
• Father — Father’s Given Name
  • Birth Records: – the first name of the persons or 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.
  • Death Records: death date; Day-Month-Year
  • Marriage Records: the first name of the fathers of the bride and the groom.
• Mother — Mother’s Given Name and Maiden Name.
  • Birth Records: Mother’s Given Name and Maiden Name.
  • Death Records: Mother’s Given Name and Maiden Name.
  • Marriage Records: Mother’s Given Name and Maiden Name of both the bride and groom.
• 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 or death
• Town Information
  • Birth Records — The town or village where the child was born.
  • Death Records – The District and County of the Town where the death was registered.
  • Marriage Records – The Town where the marriage took place.
• Comments — Other useful information in the record.
  • Birth Records: Names of witnesses, godparents, mohel or midwife; the mother and/or father’s town of birth; the father’s occupation; notes on illegitimacy; an indication if the child died (and the date); etc.
  • Death Records: town of birth, cause of death, marital status, age, etc.
  • Marriage Records: names of witnesses, or the bride and/or groom’s town of birth.
• 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

A complete inventory can be accessed by clicking here.

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.