Geo-History of the Toponymy of Mohács Plain, SW Hungary

Abstract

The Mohács plain had strategic and symbolic importance both during the Ottoman occupation and the seventeenth century liberation wars due to the decisive battles fought on, and military routes crossing the plain, transforming it into a military and memorial landscape. By the twentieth century it became one of the most conflicted Cold War border-scapes, where the Hungarian ‘Maginot-line’ was constructed against the Yugoslav army in the late 1940-ies. The Homeland War of Croatia was fought just south of the plain in the 1990-ies and the anti-migration fence of Hungary was also installed here in 2015. The region, which was owned for centuries by the bishops of Pécs and the abbots of Szekszárd but also played an outstanding role in the Hungarian Reformation, is inhabited by Serbs, Croats, Germans and Gipsies besides the majority Hungarians. The geographical names of the plain is well documented from the early Middle Ages, they reflect the (different) various migration waves, the military operations, and (different) various state policies. It is an ideal research area, which as a case study, well represents the different origins and bottom up changes of Hungarian place names as well as top down policies influencing them.

Objectives

• To describe the changes of place names in a multicultural Central European area during early modern and modern history.

• To explain how population changes as well as state-driven ethno-linguistic homogenization impacted on uniforming place names.

• To describe how different social groups are represented in local place names at different historical periods.

• To present the toponymic consequences of great historical events such as the Battle of (Mohacs) Mohács (1526).

• To show how a new state border drawn in the twentieth century affects place names in Central Europe.

Introduction

There are seven settlements in the Mohács plain, which lies along the southern border of Hungary and the Danube (Fig. 1). They are situated in a place of great strategic importance, inhabited since ancient times, where the Roman Limes extended and the medieval via militaris, the military road used by the Hungarian kings and the Ottoman sultans, passed through. This explains the rich conflict history of the area. Wars have been a heavy burden on the local population. From time to time, the population was replaced: they were forced to flee from the armies, and then some of the previous population returned, while other places were replaced by new inhabitants.

Fig. 1

Source www.openstreetmap.hu

Mohacs Plain, 2021.

The multicultural character of the region is based on these waves of settlements. On the Danube war route from the Balkans, Serbs and Vlachs arrived, Croats from Bosnia and Slavonia settled, and Germans from Germanic regions sailed down the Danube and landed in Mohács. The later arrivals partly adopted the earlier geographic names, often reformulating them, but in all cases creating their own. The Jews and Gypsies who arrived in the last waves settled in concentrations and had only a minor impact. This is partly because their arrival coincides with the beginnings of the Hungarian ethnic homogenisation drive.

The various military confrontations in the border area also left their mark on the geographic pattern. These include the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War (the Yugoslav-Hungarian confrontation of the 1950s), but in this respect the building of the fence of the 2015 migration crisis has also had an impact on local conditions. In what follows, we attempt to examine the typical forms and types of geographical naming in the Mohács plain.

Multicultural Society on the Mohács Plain

The Mohács Plain is a multicultural microregion, where a small multi-ethnic town (Mohács) and villages of different ethnic backgrounds are located along the Danube. Kölked has been Hungarian since the Middle Ages and Calvinist since the Turkish conquest (sixteenth century), Udvar and Nagynyárád are predominantly Catholic German, Majs is predominantly Catholic German, but until the early twentieth century partly Serbian Orthodox, Lánycsók is Catholic German and Hungarian, and to a lesser extent Catholic Croatian and Orthodox Serbian. Sátorhely was created later than the others from the central manor of a large livestock ranch, so its population is of mixed origin and its community was established late, only in the twentieth century. The battle of 1526, when the Ottoman army of Suleiman the Magnificent defeated the troops of King Louis (Jagiellon) II (.) of Hungary and Bohemia, gave the plain its particular historical importance. The longer-term consequence of this was that the central part of Hungary, including the area around Mohács, came under Ottoman-Turkish occupation for a century and a half.

Our study area consists of three parts, the physical geography of which was shaped by the Danube river. The first is the former pre-regulated floodplain of the river, where, due to the regular annual flooding, it was not practical to settle permanently until recently, and only temporary dwellings (‘szállás’) were traditionally built. However, its economic significance (fishing, cattle grazing, reed cutting, etc.) was very important.

The second is the flood-free terrace, which played an important role in human settlement. The main roads leading to it (the N-S Danube military road and the E-W road crossing the plain via Mohács Island), as well as the cultivation of arable land, horticulture and livestock farming (horses, cattle and sheep), were also significant. Several settlements, such as Mohács, Udvar, Kölked, Sátorhely and Lánycsók, were built on this land.

The 20–40 m high basin rim surrounding the plain from the west also attracted settlement, and the importance of the rim effect was also noted. Several of the settlements (settled) were on the edge of the plain: Majs and Nagynyárád on the basin rim, and Lánycsók, mentioned above, on the plain but before the rim. This area was characterised by a terrain with streams, forests (ed) and pastoralism, where, in addition, there was a long tradition of viticulture.¹

Due to its favourable geographical conditions, the area has been inhabited since ancient times. The oldest geographical names date back to the Middle Ages of the Kingdom of Hungary, and several of them appear in Latin documents, but their number has diminished. Among the settlements, the names of Mohács (Mohach), Majs (Moysa), Nagynyárád (Narad), Kölked (Kulked) and Lánycsók (Lanchuk) are Árpád-dynasty age, while the name of Udvar (Wdwarth) is probably fifteenth century. Furthermore the name of Sátorhely (Satoristye), as we shall see, dates back only to the seventeenth century.

The disappearance of a significant part of the medieval names is due to the Ottoman conquest in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, when the population of the area was largely replaced, while the settlers who arrived in waves only partially preserved the earlier names, in many cases changing or giving new names to the geographical places.

Settlement in the region took place in several stages. The oldest layer is the Hungarian, of which Kölked is an example. Its population was a fishing community living along the Danube floodplain. The river and its marshes provided not only a livelihood but also shelter for the inhabitants, and it is the only Hungarian village to have survived the Turkish conquest. The settlement was surrounded on three sides by marshland and water, and could only be approached by land from the west, across a narrow landbridge. In case of danger, the inhabitants took refuge on the islands in the floodplain.

Already in Ottoman-Turkish times, the influx of Southern Slavs began, and for a time they played a dominant role in the life of the region. The Balkan Vlachs, the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats from Bosnia and Slavonia arrived in several waves between the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries. A considerable number of land-use names and names of periodic hydrographic phenomena can be attributed to them.

The year 1704 was a critical period in the region. The previous year had seen the outbreak of the Rákóczi uprising, to which the Habsburg court responded in part by arming the Serbian communities loyal to it that had settled in the southern part of the country. Serbian irregulars attacked the Calvinist Hungarian and Catholic Croatian populations. The survivors fled to the marshes, forests or further afield, and some of them never returned. Later that year, Kuruc troops arrived and began an ethnic cleansing similar to that of the Serbs, which left the Mohács area almost deserted for a number of years.

After the Kuruc uprising (1711), the local landowners (the Bishop of Pécs in the north and Prince Eugene of Savoy in the south) had to face a severe shortage of labour, together with the destruction of the villages. The only solution to this problem was mass settling. Therefore, in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries, several waves of settlers arrived in the seven settlements.

The Serbs who had fled from the Kuruc troops to Slavonia (now Croatia) returned to the study area only at the end of the War of Independence. They settled in separate quarters in Mohács, and resettled in Lánycsók and Majs (and briefly in Nagynyárád). Similarly, some of the Catholic Croats (Sokac) returned to Mohács and were joined by new settlers. They came to Lánycsók mainly from here, by secondary settlement.

The Germans arrived in several waves from the 1710s onwards, as a result of landlord settlements, with the largest numbers arriving during the reign of Maria Theresa, from the 1740s onwards. The settlers came from Germany by boat, often in communities, accompanied by their priests. In addition to Mohács, where they occupied a separate district, they settled in the villages of Nagynyárád, Majs, Udvar and Lánycsók and engaged in agriculture. They mainly spoke the German dialects of Rhineland Franconian and Fulda.

Gypsies were certainly present in the area at the time of the Turkish conquest, but there are no reliable records of this. They arrived in the area sporadically in the eighteenth century and in masses in several waves in the nineteenth–twentieth centuries from Wallachia, and in smaller numbers from Serbia. Their settlements were established in Mohács, on the southern outskirts of the town, on the banks of the Danube, and in Kölked and Lánycsók outside the village. All three linguistic groups of Gypsies living in Hungary settled in Mohács: the Hungarian-speaking Romungros, who originally spoke the Carpathian dialect of Romanian, the Romani-speaking Oláh Gypsies and the Beyas, who spoke an archaic version of Romanian. In Kölked, the latter group has been identified as speaking the Munchan dialect. Many of them were involved in wood and metalworking and itinerant trade. By the early twentieth century, their numbers may have reached a few hundred.

The last settler layer to arrive in the area was the Jews. A large number of them started to settle in Mohács in the 1850s, and by the end of the century there were nearly a thousand of them living in the town on the Danube. They came mainly from Galicia, Russia and, to a lesser extent, from Austrian territories. Their language was Yiddish. In Mohács, which was ethnically organised into neighbourhoods, their houses stood on both sides of the main street. Their community had a school, a synagogue and a cemetery. They supported themselves through trade, small business and intellectual occupations.

From the end of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, the ethnic homogenisation of the area took place, and assimilation processes and Hungarianisation intensified. The area was under Serbian military occupation 1918–1921. In the 1920s, a significant part of the local Serb population opted to join the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. During the Second World War, the Jewish community and part of the Roma were victims of the Shoah. Around 1000 people from Mohács and the surrounding area were transported by train to Auschwitz, only a few of whom returned. On the basis of the principle of collective guilt, Germans were deported to Germany in large numbers after the war, especially in 1947. At the same time, and subsequently, under the Czechoslovak–Hungarian population exchange agreement, Hungarians resettled in Hungary were in many cases housed in the homes of displaced Germans in our region.

Another intersection of the research on geographical names is gender. How many geographical names of male and female origin are there in the area? Hungarian geographical naming tends to be male-centric, and even more so in the study area. The proportion of names of female origin is low, and there are hardly any examples. This is mainly due to the fact that the indigenous Hungarian community (see the fishermen of Kölked) and the German, Serbian and Croatian settlers created patriarchal, predominantly peasant societies. Gypsies and Jews who immigrated from the Balkans also lived in patriarchal communities. The role of women in the process of settlement was thus marginalised, as is reflected in the naming process.

Literature Review and Methods

Toponymic research in Hungary has a long history, mainly carried out by linguists, cartographers and ethnographers. Hoffmann and his colleagues have provided a comprehensive overview of the history of Hungarian geographical naming in their monograph.² Faragó summarized the considerations related to the use of geographical names mainly from a cartographic point of view.³ Among the regional studies, István Csernicskó's research on the linguistic landscape of the border region of Ukraine with Hungary (the area of the former Kingdom of Hungary called Ciscarpathia) stands out.⁴ The analysis of Fancsaly and his colleagues on the Hungarian language in Croatia is also valuable for the present study, as the area they investigate, the Drávaszög, is a spatial continuation of the Mohács plain from the south, beyond the border.⁵

The first surviving map of Hungary by Lazarus secretarius (1527/1982) in 1527 already shows the area around Mohács in a prominent position, and also the famous battle of 1526 appears (Fig. 2).⁶ However, a more detailed modern study of the toponymy and hydronymy of the Mohács plain is only possible from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, with a few minor exceptions, due to the lack of sources. It is only after the wars of liberation from Ottoman rule, when the first primary sources and maps containing a significant amount of relevant information survive (from the 1760 and 1770s). These maps, which were produced by the Royal Hungarian Chamber in order to ensure the efficient management of the treasury's assets, not only show the land use, the hydrography, the roads, the boundaries of the settlements and the street network, with the boundaries of the plots and buildings, but also the names of the most important parts of the lands, hamlets, manors etc. belonging to each settlement.

Fig. 2

(Mohacs) Mohács and its surroundings on the map of Lazarus secretarius (1527/1982)

The next important sources are from the second half of the nineteenth century, when cadastral maps were drawn up for the purpose of establishing the land tax for each of the settlements concerned. Of these, the 1865 surveys are particularly useful, as they provide a more detailed record of the lands of the settlements. It is also worth examining the military surveys, the first of which of 1783 and the second of 1858 contain less information, while the relevant map sections of the third military survey of 1880 are much richer in data on geographical names. The military survey of Hungary after the border changes of Trianon (1920), which was repeated by the Royal Hungarian Army Cartographic Institute in 1940–1944 with the Hungarian territorial growth recorded, also fits into this series.

In addition to the map sources, the description of Baranya County (1735/2017) from Mátyás Bél’s Notitia Hungariae novae historico geographica…,⁷ András Vályi's three-volume work Magyar országnak leírása (Description of Hungary) (1796–1799),⁸ and the Baranya vármegye helynévtára (Local nomenclature of Baranya County) (1864–1865/2019) by Frigyes Pesty can be mentioned in connection with the examination of the relevant geographical names.⁹ The Hungarian Central Statistical Office, partly based on the above works, has published historical gazetteers of some counties, including Baranya County, using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, with different name variations of individual localities, hamlets, unincorporated inhabited places, lands, etc. with important demographic, religious, ethnic and economic characteristics.¹⁰ The most important in this respect, however, is the two-volume work entitled Baranya megye földrajzi nevei (Geographical Names of Baranya County) (1982), edited by János Pesti, which, as a result of large-scale local collection work, recorded the geographical names of various spatial entities belonging to the individual settlements, often with their supposed or real origins, together with historical, ethnographic or archaeological information.¹¹

Tent distinguished two main research approaches in toponymyc research.¹² After examining the studies published in the scientific journal ‘Names’ from 1952–2014, he found that one large group of studies focused on the origin and meaning of geographical names, while the other major group researched in a spatial context and focused on the spatial patterns of names. In his analysis, he also showed that in some cases, as in the present study, the two approaches can be mixed, but this is the case for only a few percent of the works examined.

Intensive place-name research looks to answer the wh-questions in the process of creating a ‘biography’ of a place name. Who named the place? When was it named? Why was it given that name? What does the name mean? What does it refer to? What is the linguistic and geographical origin? Where is the place in question? The list of questions is, of course, endless. Extensive place-name research, on the other hand, uses databases, a larger set of place-names, and does not focus on a specific name but on the naming characteristics of a narrower or wider area. From these investigations typologies can be created.

The dual function of geographical names is the same in our research area as everywhere else in the world. On the one hand, they help us to find our way around, they mark geographical locations, but they also store collective memory, they are cultural, historical and political representations and, as a result, they can also become political tools.¹³ The state power exercises control over its territory by creating symbolic space through the choice of geographical names, among others, that reinforce and legitimise its own power and identity.

Physical or Geographical Features and Their Linguistic Representation

In the region, the smaller and larger elevated terrains (hillocks, rolling hills) have been named in a variety of ways. One mound (hillock) that barely rises out of the plain is the Látó-hegy (Watch hill) of Mohács, which emphasises the fact that the whole field of Mohács can be seen from the ‘hill’ next to the road to Nagynyárád. Similarly, the Planina-földek (Planina fields) of Mohács were named because of their elevation from the surroundings, where the local inhabitants added the South Slavic ‘planina’ (mountain) to the Hungarian name of the cultivated area (‘földek’ means fields).

In many place names can one find the adjectives lower, upper, back, middle, small, big, short, long, wide etc. both in Hungarian, German or in the South Slavic languages. For example, in Nagynyárád you can find the German Untere-, Obere-, and Hintern Hegwald (lower, upper and back young forest), Mittel Weingarten (middle vineyard), Kleine and Grosse Grund Wiesen (small and large meadows), in Majs Oberdorf (upper village), in Mohács the Hungarian Alsó-, Közép- und Felső-mező (lower, middle and upper meadows),¹⁴ and Kurta-dűlő (short fields),¹⁵ in Lánycsók the meadow called Siroko (široko, meaning broad in South Slavic languages) and the German Lange Wiesen (long meadows), and on Mohács Island the area called Sirina (širina, meaning width in South Slavic languages).¹⁶

There are also geographical names with old or new adjectives, such as the German Alte Dorf Schanze (Old Village Schanze/Sconce) in the southern part of Mohács, the popular names of the Rókus temető (Rókus cemetery): Öreg temető (Old Cemetery) in Hungarian, Alter Friedhof in German, Staro groblje in the local South Slavic languages, or the manor in Sátorhely, called Újistálló (New Stables) in Hungarian and Neuer Stall in German.¹⁷

Among the names of the unincorporated lands, we can mention the Sarok-dűlő (Corner land) in Majs (Csucsaj in South Slavic languages),¹⁸ which got its name from its location, as well as Sarok utca (Corner Street) and Szélső utca (Side Street) in Mohács,¹⁹ or the land called Forgó (Turning) in Kölked. The latter was located on the Kölked branch of the Danube, where the river turned, creating a large loop, while the Hajlok-part (Bending-bank), also located here, takes its name from its curve.²⁰

Also of particular interest in this group is the Fekete-kapu (Black Gate), unincorporated land of Sátorhely on the Osijek-Buda road, called Schwarzes Thor by the Germans and Crna kapija by the local South Slavs, which is also associated with the Battle of Mohács.²¹ It is here—and also at the Iron Gate of Mohács–Lánycsók—that according to local tradition 300 students from Pécs sacrificed themselves in 1526 to resist the Ottomans, while another tradition says that until the end of the First World War, Bosnian Muslim pilgrims prayed here every year—besides the Turkish Hill—for the Ottoman martyrs who died in the Battle of Mohács. However the exact meaning and origin of its name isn’t known anymore just like that of the Vaskapu-dűlő (Iron Gate lands, or the German Eisenes Thor on the map section of the First Military Survey of 1783), although some recollections say that it was named after the black gate of a tavern that once stood here.²² Finally, the physical characteristics of the Büdös-árok (Stinky ditch) in Mohács, named for its strong and unpleasant smell, are also noteworthy. This ditch, formerly a swampy stream, protected the town from the west during the Ottoman era, as can be seen on Henrik Ottendorf's map of 1663. Later, from the eighteenth century onwards, it separated the two parts of the town, Ó-Mohács (Old Mohács; in German Alt-Mohács) and Új-Mohács (New Mohács; in German Neu-Mohács).²³

1700

The expulsion of the Turks from Hungary began in 1684, and after heavy fighting, the Habsburgs successfully ended it in 1699 with the Treaty of Karlowitz. The decisive battle for the liberation of this region took place in 1687 at nearby Nagyharsány (second battle of (Mohacs) Mohács). After the victorious battle, the reorganisation of the area began. The Islamised population was forced to leave the area, while new settlers arrived.

Initially, the Serbs played a decisive role in this process, moving into the country along the Danube after the Balkan campaign of the Habsburgs (1690), following their great migration. However, the extent to which their settlement was permanent in the 1690 s and early 1700s, in the midst of warfare along the main transport route, is questionable. In addition, in 1704 they fled to the other side of the Drava due to the attacks of the Kuruc troops.

The map below, dated 1700, is of great importance in the context of the foregoing for several reasons (Fig. 3). Firstly, it provides a visual record of the situation after the liberation from the Turks, including the settlements that were repopulated by the majority of Serbs (and Croats), according to the settlement hierarchy. On the other hand, it describes the moment when the Serb settlement had already taken place, while some settlements had only a few years left before the aforementioned depopulation in 1704.

Fig. 3

The (Mohacs) Mohács Plain in 1700Footnote

Universum dominium Siklossiense…(1700).

In the year before the map was drawn (1699), Prince Eugene of Savoy, the victorious general of the Ottoman war, received the territory of the Bellye estate from the Habsburg emperor in recognition of his merits.²⁵ The map shows the change in local land tenure: among other things, it separates the bishop's estates around Mohács from the prince's estates and their villages further south. In recording the names of the settlements, we do not read standardised forms of names, but we see how the map-maker interpreted the geographical names and displayed them on the map. As far as the geographical names and the various inscriptions are concerned, it can be said with certainty that the map is in Hungarian, German and French, in addition to Latin. In some settlements, the network of settlements is also structured in a way by the marking of churches and houses: places with churches are higher in the hierarchy. The names of the settlements, as can be seen in Table 1, are mostly similar to their later names, with two notable exceptions: the cases of Quilue/Kölked and (F)Utvar, i.e. Földvár, are special.

Table 1 Explanation of the names on the 1700 map of Bellye estate

The widespread ‘ö’ sound, or more precisely letter, in Hungarian, as well as consonant shifting, is a problem for Westerners when describing certain words. This is true for the spelling of both names. However, Kölked is well defined by its location on a marshland, by the fact that it is still a settlement in the same place and by the fact that its Hungarian population survived the Turkish conquest. The ‘k’ becomes ‘g’, while the ‘ö’ becomes ‘u’… in transliteration.

The case of the village of Utvar on the map is different from that of Kölked, as there is no settlement in the area that can be clearly linked to it. The very similar-sounding village of Udvar was established only in the second half of the eighteenth century along the Mohács-Osijek road, in the western, wooded part of the Dályok village estate, with the name Udvard. However the identification of a certain settlement called Földvár and the question of how to spell its geographical name is part of one of the most important Hungarian historical debates that has been going on for about 100 years. Bishop István Brodarics, an eyewitness chronicler of the Battle of Mohács in 1526, mentions in his account that the Turkish artillery was deployed against the Christian army at a village called Földvár. The centre of the battle was therefore at the village and to the north of it.

Engineers who surveyed and mapped the area during the Turkish war (1684–1699) came across the name “Földvár” (Earth Castle) several times, because there were several settlements in the area of operations that bore this name. The most prominent are (Duna)Földvár and (Tisza)Földvár, but it seems that Földvár, situated on the Mohács plain and at the mentioned centre of the battle, also came into this circle.

In the works of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, we are confronted with the problem of name transcription on several occasions. During his mapping of the Danube, the (Duna)Földvár in Tolna County appeared on his maps and in his descriptions as Feudvar and Fudvar. And the name of the former Hungarian (Tisza, then Bács)Földvár along the Tisza, now Bačko Gradište in Serbia, was recorded exactly as it appears on the above map of 1700, i.e. as Utvar. In addition, the name of the water on the island of Mohács, Udvar Palus (Lake Udvar), was also given, and the term Udvar was used in its name (Fig. 4).²⁶ This body of water is Lacus Földváriensis (Mikoviny, 1720–1725), Földvár-tó (Lake Földvar), which was once part of the estate of which the village of Földvar on the plain of Mohács was the centre, and was therefore named after the village. On the basis of the above, it is likely that the mysterious Utvar is a distorted fixed form of the geographical name Földvár.

Fig. 4

Udvar Palus, Lake Földvár on (Mohacs) Mohács Island (1696/1726)

The geographical site in question has recently become the focus of landscape reconstruction and archaeological investigations.²⁷ The remains of a medieval settlement have been found along the Borza stream, visible on the map (Fig. 3), on the southern side of a crossing (and to a lesser extent on the northern side). The archaeological site in question is located two and a half kilometres west of the Osijek–Mohács road and three kilometres east of Majs. It is located where the village is marked on the 1700 map. This provides an additional basis for assuming that the location of Földvar, which marks the central area of the Battle of Mohács, has been identified.

Of the settlements in the Mohács plain that can be identified from the map, a (pretty) good number survived the period of destruction between 1704 and 1711 (e.g. Mohács, Majs, Kölked), while others were depopulated (Merse, Ormány, Földvár) and their territory became part of the settlements in the resettled area.

Linguistic Landscape Before Magyarization

The evolution of the geographical place names of the Mohács plain from the end of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century can be traced back to several origins. The most important of these is the change in the ethnic composition of the region, which had a fundamental impact on place names, their development and their changes.

As described above, by the second half of the eighteenth century, the ethnic composition of the settlements had been established and stablilized for a longer period of time.

If we examine the geographical names that have mainly survived on maps, we can see that the basic layer of names of the unincorporated lands and fields is formed by the names of the former Hungarian villages of medieval origin, which were destroyed in the Ottoman period or were not finally resettled after the Ottoman period. Although these villages no longer existed at that time, their names survived in the linguistically dominant South Slavic–Germanic environment: the parts of the territory once belonged to them together with their old names were merged into the unincorporated lands of the nearer settlement. This is how the former villages of Ormány, Merse (Mersa), Géth (Getta), Lak and Bátya (Főlsi Battin, Also Batin),²⁸ are shown as hamlets/preadiums belonging to the village of Majs on the maps of the 1760–1770s by the chamber cartographer Andreas Kneidinger, while the former settlement of Körtvélyes (Körtviles) became an inseparable part of the village of Nagynyárád (Nyárád).²⁹ In this respect, the map section of the First Military Survey of 1783, which is nearly the same age, preserves only the medieval name of Gáta in the German Gátha Thal (Gátha valley; spelled with the Hungarian letter ‘á’).³⁰ The cadastral maps of the 1850–1860s show the survival of the former village of Ösztyén (Usztin, Ustine) as an unincorporated land at Majs,³¹ the aforementioned Gáta and Monyoród were listed as belonging to Lánycsók, while the former Bácsfalu with farm buildings is listed as a manorial centre of farming (Bácsfalu, Puszta Bácsfalu).³² Mohács similarly preserves the names of the medieval villages of Jenő (Jenyő), Csele (Cselle) and Földvár.³³

The names of these fields and unincorporated lands were markedly different from the surrounding South Slavic and German place names. However, it can also be observed that the original form used by the Hungarians was in some cases adopted to the language of other ethnicities. Thus, for example, the name of the medieval village of Bátya was first changed to Bacsin under the influence of the Slavs, only to be divided into Unter and Ober Bacsin (Lower- and Upper Bacsin in English) by the Germans who settled in the area alongside the Serbs. In the same line, we can also mention the aforementioned Ösztyén, whose former part, annexed to the outskirts of Majs, was called Ustine by the Serbs.

In addition to the above-mentioned problems of place names of medieval Hungarian origin, the cadastral maps of the 1850–1860s can be read as follows. Although in our study area these maps were produced in the period of imperial neo-absolutism following the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848–1849, when the German language dominated in Hungary under central pressure, this was not, or can hardly be detected in the use of geographical names on the maps of the Mohács plain. Basically, the geographic names, even if with minor or major disproportions, mostly reflected the ethnic composition of the settlements studied, in which, moreover, the German ethnic group was the dominant element in many places either way. Moreover, we can add that in the more intense years of neo-absolutism, i.e. the period of 1852–1853, some settlement cadastral maps not only show geographical names in the languages of the main ethnic groups, but also a greater number of geographical names in Hungarian. Even in settlements where the Hungarian ethnic group was certainly under-represented. Thus, for example, in 1853 in Majs, inhabited mainly by Germans and Serbs, place names like Majsi rét (Majs meadow), Majsi föld (Majs field) or Alsó Batyin (Lower Batyin) and Felső Batyin (Upper Batyin) was listed.³⁴ By 1865, however, the German equivalents of these same names were to be found in the form of Maisser Äcker, Maisser Wiesen, Unter Bacsin and Ober Bacsin.³⁵

Similarly, in Lánycsók in 1853 the names Parlag (Fallow) or Birkás (Sheepy) are found,³⁶ which are replaced in 1865 by Parlog, adapted to the German language, and Schaflerwiesen in German.³⁷ We can also mention Nagynyárád, which in 1853 was still listed as Nagynyárád in Hungarian but in 1865 as Gross-Nyárád in German, while the name of one of the lands Törökös (Turkish) surrounding it, was translated into German as Türkei.³⁸ The reason for all this, however, can hardly be, in our opinion, a kind of Germanisation effort, as the 1860s were already just about to be marked by a freer atmosphere and a return to constitutionalism. Rather, the identity, ethnicity and language skills of the local respondents, and even more so of the surveyors, were of great importance in the unregulated work carried out in a multi-ethnic environment. Thus, the above may be explained by the fact that the mapping of 1852–1853 in all the settlements of the Mohács plain was carried out by a young Hungarian officer and military engineer, Ágoston Vucskics, who was a veteran of the War of Independence. The fact that in the case of geographical names there could hardly have been any centrally controlled Germanisation is confirmed by the example of Mohács, which, although it had a German population, still had almost entirely Hungarian (Alsó-, Közép-, Felső-mező, in English Lower, Middle and Upper meadow, Elűhegy, in English Forehill) and South Slavic place names on its cadastral maps. Within this, there is also the spatial difference that the geographical names of South Slavic origin (Sirina, from the South Slavic širina, meaning width; Topolovac, meaning warm place, warm back, etc.), which can be traced back to the Turkish period, are concentrated more in the island part of Mohács.³⁹

As to whether the geographical names of individual settlements were indeed adapted to the ethnicity of the inhabitants, the village of Majs is a case in point, where the Serbian and German names on the cadastral map of 1865 were also largely adapted to the settlement structure. Accordingly, Serbian names were concentrated in the broader area around the street of the Serbs, and German names around the street of the Germans. Thus, close to the street of the Serbs, one can see here, among others, the spatially more extensive Vukobaba area (vuk, or wolf, baba, or grandmother; later called Farkas-tanya (Wolf-farm by the Hungarians), Travnik (pasture, meadow), Dolina (valley), Salašina (residential buildings suitable for secondary economic activity), Dubravica (small oak), and also the charcoal-burning sites called Uglenica, which continued in the Dályok lands surrounding the village of Udvar. Likewise, the Hofstellen (the area behind the village courtyard), the Maisser Äcker (Maisser fields), the Maisser Wiesen (Maisser meadows), the Udvarer Wiesen (Udvarer meadows) and the Hanf Thaeler (hemp valleys) can be seen along the German Street. In the southern part of the settlement’s area, next to the Mersa Acker (Merse field), other, mainly German names are shown as part of the Maisser Wald (Maisser forest), such as the Akazienwald (acacia forest), the Salzlecken (salt licker), named after the feeding of the game, the Rehstand (deer stand), the Eichelacker (acorn field) or the Hütten (huts). As mentioned above, according to the 1865 map, the German-speaking geographical names (Mühl Wiesen, or mill meadows; Szaiker Hügel, or Szaiker hill; Dorf Weingebirge, or Village vineyard hill; Dorf Wiesen, or village meadows; Türkei Acker, or Turkish field; Schwarzes Thor, or Black gate, etc.) dominated the German-speaking part of the German-inhabited Nagynyárád, including Sátoristye, and the only reference to the former Serbian inhabitants was a single German-language name for a vineyard (Raczen Gipfel, i.e. Serb summit). The same was true of Udvar, which had only a small area and whose unincorporated lands were entirely consisted of the so-called Hofäcker (also known as Hofstellen), and which, as a village split from the ethnically southern Slavic village Dályok, was surrounded exclusively by southern Slavic land names (Veliki udvar, i.e. Great yard; Uglenica; Lisicse jame, i.e. Foxholes; Orlovo Gnizdo, i.e. Eagle's Nest, Duga megya, i.e. Long field boundary). Also included in this line was Kölked, whose Hungarian land names (Vásártető, i.e. Market summit; Várdomb, i.e. Castle hill; Csárda, i.e. Tavern; Hajlok-part, i.e. Bending bank; Kenderföld, i.e. Hemp fields; Uradalmi mező, i.e. Manorial meadows, etc.) clearly indicated its Hungarian ethnic majority.⁴⁰ In the case of Lánycsók, however, even in the mid-nineteenth century, when ethnic relations changed and German names were already present (Gata Wiesen, i.e. Gata-meadows; Mühl Bach, i.e. Mill creek; Bertoldsmühle, i.e. Bertold's mill; Rasen, i.e. Lawn; Bienen Garten, i.e. Bee garden; Schaflerwiesen, i.e. Sheep meadows, etc.) there are strikingly few Serbian and Croatian names. Here, only Siroko (broad), a broad meadow near the mill creek, appears on the 1865 cadastral map,⁴¹ while on the 1853 map the area called Táboristye has a South Slavic meaning.⁴² The latter, however, was formed from the Hungarian word for ‘tábor’ (camp), the meaning of which was thus camp site, camp field.

A special mention should be made of Sátorhely/Satoristye (today's Croatian transliteration Šatorišće), where the origin of the geographical name can be traced back to 1630/1631. It was at this time that Sultan Suleiman had a memorial site erected by Hasan, the beylerbey of Buda to commemorate his victory over King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. A few kilometres south of Mohács, along the Osijek-Buda road, he had a wooden pavilion built on a few metres high small mound, which had originally been constructed by the Romans, and had a well dug next to it. The site, known in Ottoman as Hünkjar tepesi (Emperor's Hill), was a favourite with pilgrims and was visited by many well-known Christian and Ottoman travellers and soldiers. In 1626 Athanasio Georgiceo, before the pavilion was built, named the hill as the site of Suleiman's camp in 1526, while Henrik Ottendorf in 1663 described it as the site of the Sultan's tent. In 1687, Tobias von Hesslingen drew attention to the ‘wooden tent’ here, which he said was built to commemorate the tent of the victorious ‘Turkish emperor’. The site was then also marked on Samuel Mikoviny's map of 1720–1725 as the place marked by the entrenchments of Suleiman's tent (Solman Tentorii Shanzense), while Joannes Vötter placed the inscription Shaturix (still called Schatriz by those of German origin) on the hill on his map of 1766.

This inscription, which is a linguistic variant of the South Slavic Satoristye, meaning “place of the tent”, clearly shows that this memorial site was originally called Satoristye. Hesslingen's note above is perhaps the most helpful in understanding the origin of the geographical name. According to which, the southern Slavic population of the Mohács plain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries believed that Sultan Suleiman's tent stood on the hill at the time of the Battle of Mohács. In this context, it was believed that the Ottomans had erected the wooden tent on the hill to symbolize the former sultan's tent, which they called Satoristye in Croatian and Serbian. However, as we have seen, the memorial site and its name survived the reconquest and the expulsion of the Ottomans. The reason for this was that in 1687, after the reconquest of the area, the Ottoman pavilion was converted into a Christian chapel, which, according to maps, was only destroyed in the 1770s. However, it was precisely in parallel with the destruction of the building here that, from the 1760s onwards, the manorial centre of Satoristye, which was to form the nucleus of the later village of Satoristye, began to develop under the authority of the village of Nagynyárád.

One of the first written records of the geographical name, already in its new place, in the form of ‘Földvár alias Satanyistya’, dates back to 1780, in a document in which Queen Maria Theresa of Hungary donates the Bellye estate to her daughter, Archduchess Maria Christina.⁴³ But how did the name Földvár come to be added to the name Satoristye? Because the area, of which the first Ottoman and Christian memorial site and the newly established hamlet were all part, belonged to the former settlement of Földvár. Although this settlement of medieval origin was destroyed after the Ottoman period, as mentioned above, its name as Földvár puszta (Földvár praedium; Földvár’depopulated village’), not infrequently together with the name Satoristye, survived into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In connection with the above, the name of the small mound has also undergone an interesting evolution. After the local name Satoristye was transferred to the nearby hamlet, the mound was referred to in the South Slavic, German and Hungarian language versions of the local ethnic groups simply as Törökdomb (Turski brig, Türkenhügel, Törökdomb).

The geographical names of the various groups of Gypsies (Romanis) who arrived later than the above-mentioned ethnic groups are mostly found in Mohács, where the Gypsy neighborhood and its surroundings bear their names. This is how we can read on the maps, among others, about the Czigány zátony (Gipsy Shoal) and Czigány utca (Gipsy street), which refer to their presence.⁴⁴ The names of Gypsy street and Gypsy neighborhood appear variously in the languages of other nationalities: Zigeuner Gasse, Zigeuner Viertel (German), Ceganergas (Yiddish), Kod cigana and Ciganszki Kraj (in the local South Slavic languages). The various Romani-speaking groups of Gypsies refer to their street or neighborhood as Romani vulica (Gypsy Street), Romani utca (Gypsy Street) or Stepan Ulica Hálung (Stephen Long Street), or Kumpányö dö cigánusztá (Gypsy Company). They lived here for decades until the 1965 Danube floods destroyed their neighborhood of tiny houses. The ethnic character here was exceptionally reflected in the official naming, because the street name Dankó Pista referred to its ethnic character (Pista Dankó was a famous and nationally renowned gypsy musician in the nineteenth century). Gypsy neighborhoods existed outside Mohács in Kölked and Lánycsók. The authorities relocated the Gypsy population of Mohács to Lánycsók after the aforementioned 1965 Danube floods, but many of them migrated back to the city. The names of the places and institutions that play an important role in the life of their communities are mainly mirror translations of the geographical names of the ethnic groups that had arrived earlier.

Homes of Jews were concentrated along the main street in the centre of Mohács. The local geographic nomenclature was only minimally influenced by their names. The geographical names of earlier arrivals were adopted, possibly translated. They had a separate street where their synagogue, charity home and school were located. Here, in the place called Judengasse (Jewish Street) in Yiddish, Jews were almost the only inhabitants, while the surrounding area was called Jidese Fertl (Jewish Quarter). Their burial took place in the Zsidó temető (Jewish Cemetery; in Yiddish, Beszëkvórësz; in German, Jüdischer Kirchhof; in the local South Slavic languages, Židovsko groblje), separate from the other denominations. Outside Mohács, there are hardly any Jewish names on the Mohács plain, but in Kölked there is a place called Zsidó rét (Jewish meadow), which refers to its former tenant.

There are very few examples of geographical names with female names in the area. Most of them commemorate women of royal and aristocratic origin. In Mohács, a street is named after Saint Elisabeth, the canonised princess of the Árpád dynasty. In Mohács, a street and in Sátorhely, a housing estate were named after Dorottya Kanizsai, the second wife of the Hungarian kingdom's palatine, Imre Perényi. She buried the fallen of the battle of Mohács. The southern Slavic name of the garden of the Bishop's Palace of Mohács, ‘Marijina basta’ (Mary's garden), may refer to Maria Theresa, who reigned during the office of Bishop Zsigmond Berényi of Pécs, who was the initiator of the construction of the palace. The name ‘Izabella-föld’ (Isabella lands) refers to the name of the daughter-in-law of the largest landowner in the region, Archduke Albrecht von Habsburg. However, some women of civil origin also appear in the toponymy. It was not uncommon for family-run shops, pubs and factories to be named after the female owner or female family members. The Schmidt Károlyné Téglagyár (Brickworks of Mrs Károly Schmidt), whose popular name was Schmitt banya gödre (the pit of witch Schmitt), can be mentioned here. Also in this category is the steam mill in Mohács called Erzsébet or Erzsi malom (Elisabeth mill), named after the owner's wife. György Pécsi's restaurant in Mohács was called Laci Mári kocsmája (Laci Mari's tavern) after his wife, László Mária. But there is also example of sexist name giving: the name of a pub in Mohács called Hatcsöcsű (Sixtits), referred to the fact that at one time three unmarried, but large-breasted women worked there.⁴⁵

The Border and Its Influence on Toponymy

Hungary’s new borders following the lost First World War (1920), one of the most important traumas of Hungarian identity, also cut the Mohácsi plain in two, which resulted in the appearance of a political state border in the space, now “officially”. The precise demarcation of the border brought with it the associated geographical names in the borderside settlements, such as the Figyelő (Watcher), the Alsóbedai őrház (Alsóbéda guardhouse), the Határsorompó (Border boom gate), the Bekerített terület (Enclosured lands), the Határ-fok and Határgödör (Border cape, Border pit—places close to the state border), the Senki szigete (No man’s island an uninhabited place because of its border location) in Kölked or the Magasfigyelő (High watchtower), Határkút (Border well) and Határ állomás (Borderstation) in the village of Udvar.⁴⁶ This interwar state border could still be experienced, lived and named by the civilian population.

After the Second World War, however, Hungary's western border was closed by the iron curtain, and the southern border was even more militarised. After the Soviet Union rejected Yugoslavia's independent policy, the 630 km-long Southern Defence System was established along the Yugoslav–Hungarian border. To slow down the expected attack from the south, the Hungarian side built a multi-layered defence system reinforced with wire barriers, concrete works and mine barrages.⁴⁷ Elements of this system also appeared on the Mohács plain (Fig. 5), but by the late 1970s only one object in Majs had been given a name (the somewhat simplistic Tank Trap), despite the fact that structures were also built in Nagynyárád and Sátorhely. The reason for this lies first and foremost in the limited publicity given to the project. What is left of the objects was only taken over by the municipality in the 1990s and is colloquially known as bunkers.

Fig. 5

Cold war fortress at Majs, 1951–53

The southern border has received renewed attention since 2015 due to increased migration to Europe. The Hungarian government has built a double fence along the Hungarian-Serbian border and a single fence along (Fig. 6) the Hungarian–Croatian border to restrict movement. The temporary security fence for border surveillance purposes, is known locally simply as a fence or border fence. Alongside them, high surveillance posts (magasfigyelő) have again been set up in the area, for which the abbreviated word mafi is used. However, in order for more geographical names to be associated with the border fence and for them to become permanent, the southern border fence and its elements need to be maintained for a long period of time.

Fig. 6

Temporary security barrier for border surveillance purposes (2015). Source own photo

Magyarization, Remembrance Politics, Battle of Mohacs

In Hungary, there is a long tradition of naming public spaces (from) after Hungarian national heroes, or historical figures expressing national unity. Although examples from almost every period can be found, a certain clustering can be observed. The main groups of historical figures are as follows:

• the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian basin in the ninth and tenth centuries and the names of the Árpád Dynasty;

• Heroes of the anti-Turkish struggles of the 15th–seventeenth centuries;

• the national-liberal figures of the 19th-century “reform era” and the anti-Hapsburg liberation struggle of 1848–1849;

• writers, poets, artists and politicians of the first half of the twentieth century.

There is no balance between the above groups. The local authorities, seeking to conform to the ideological background of the political establishment, have repeatedly made changes in the areas under their jurisdiction. In the last century, there have been several renaming periods in Hungary affecting geographical names:

• First of all, the period between 1898 and 1912, when the official names of settlements were being determined, with a significant degree of Magyarization.

• During the 133-day rule of the Communist Republic of Councils in 1919, there were also name changes in several places (this did not affect the Mohács region, which was under Serbian occupation at the time).

• Renamings took place between the two world wars, but mainly in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As a result, names with German and Italian political connotations appeared on public squares (Mussolini and Hitler tér (Mussolini and Hitler squares) in Budapest, for example).

• In the first half of the 1950s, names with a Soviet-Russian influence and public squares named after communist martyrs/heroes appeared.

• In the early 1990s and after 2012, (an) other waves of renaming swept Hungary. In two phases, most of the names with a communist connotation were either changed to the former name or the names were changed to politically neutral ones.

In the examined region—as in other parts of Hungary—the state geographic naming policy began in 1898, when the National Municipal Register Committee was established (in) by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In the course of its work until 1912, it reviewed the country's municipal names and intervened in many cases in local naming to eliminate nomenclatural duplications and to clarify geographical place names in line with modern life and the needs of the state. Its statutory task was to ensure that each municipality had only one official name and a clear spelling. In addition, it had a decisive role not only for the names of the old settlements but also for the names of the newly founded ones. In the Kingdom of Hungary at the end of the nineteenth century, there were about a hundred thousand names for the twelve and a half thousand settlements. The changes were not only practical, however, but also reflected a choice of values: the committee made efforts to promote Magyarisation throughout its work. All it needed was a foreign pronunciation to translate the names in multi-ethnic areas—such as the Mohács plain—and give them a Hungarian form and meaning. Thus, for example in our region, the medieval name Lanchuk became Lánycsók (‘girl kiss’) in 1903, or the South Slavic name Satoristye became Sátorhely (’place of the tent’), while the name Udvard was simplified to Udvar (‘yard’). The name of Gross Nyárád, inhabited by Germans, became Nagynyárád in the twentieth century, when the adjective was changed to “nagy” (gross = nagy = big).

Since 1964, the Geographical Names Committee has taken over the role of the OKTB, with the task of establishing the official geographical names. It has been re-regulated several times and its current remit is “to establish and give opinions on certain official geographical names and to register geographical names.”⁴⁸

Below we present the characteristics of the public names of the seven settlements of the Mohács plain and the changes that have taken place in the nomenclature.

The historical interest of the local society is demonstrated by the fact that the name of the Roman settlement of the area, Altinum, appears among the names of the public spaces in Mohács (Altinum street), together with the names of other nearby medieval settlements that no longer exist (there are streets named after the medieval Hungarian Földvár and Körtvélyes in Mohács). In addition, there are also street names related to the mythological past of the Hungarian people and to the conquest of Hungary (Nimród, Megyer, Hunor, Géza fejedelem [Géza Prince], Árpád and Szent István streets).

At the same time, the name of St Stephen appears in other settlements, including Nagynyárád. The names of such great figures of the anti-Turkish struggles as János Hunyadi, Mátyás Hunyadi or Miklós Zrínyi can appear as public names in any settlement in the country, so we can observe them in the seven settlements under study. At the same time, there is a peculiarity of the local nomenclature that is much less common elsewhere, namely the use of the Hungarian names of the heroes of the Battle of Mohács (Table 2), fought here in 1526 against the troops of Suleiman I. These persons are:

Table 2 Names of the heroes of the Battle of Mohács in the public spaces of Mohács, Sátorhely, Lánycsók and Kölked

• Dorottya of Kanizsai, the noblewoman who, according to tradition, buried the dead of the battle with her 400 servants. Not only streets but also the local museum are named after her.

• István Brodarics, bishop of Serem, royal chancellor, humanist, chief chronicler of the battle. Not only a public place, but also the primary school of Mohács bears his name.

• According to tradition, János Drágffy, a magistrate, carried the banner in the battle and was killed in action.

• Pál Tomori, Archbishop of Kalocsa, commander-in-chief of the Hungarian troops, was killed in battle.

• Lajos II, King of Hungary and Bohemia, fled the battlefield after the defeat and drowned in the Danube.

• Péter Perényi, nobleman, took part in the Battle of Mohács and survived.

It is interesting to note, however, that in the villages inhabited by people of German origin, there is no public space named after any of the participants in the Battle of Mohács. In Udvar there is only one street, Fő utca (Main Street), and in Majs and Nagynyárád there are several Hungarian names, but no names of heroes from Mohács (Table 3). It is also striking that neither Majs nor Nagynyárád—despite their nationality roots—have any official public names of German origin. On the other hand, several names referring to Hungarian national belonging can be read off the maps.

Table 3 Street names of Majs and Nagynyárád

The prominent figures of the reform era and of the 1848–1849 Revolution and War of Independence play a prominent role in the use of public names throughout Hungary, including the Mohács plain. Streets named after Lajos Kossuth (politician, governor of Hungary in 1848–1849), István Széchenyi (Hungarian aristocrat, promoter of westernisation and modernisation), Sándor Petőfi (poet and military officer, martyr/hero of the War of Independence), János Arany (poet), Mihály Táncsics (writer, publicist, utopian socialist) are typical public names.

There are two other interesting phenomena that strike the observer. As in the rest of the country, the name of Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II (leader of the anti-Hapsburg Kuruc uprising of 1703–1711) appears on street signs (Mohács, Nagynyárád, Lánycsók). He is almost the only Hungarian historical figure who has enjoyed unbroken popularity over the past century and a half, regardless of the period or political regime. He has been invoked and his memory upheld in every political era, although different elements of his complex historical legacy have been emphasised. The Horthy, Rákosi, Kádár and Orbán governments have all used his memory.

Another interesting feature is that a good number of historical figures who are compatible with the Marxist view of history (who lived before 1945 and can be interpreted on the basis of Marxist doctrine) are also represented in the public spaces of the seven municipalities. Among the members of this group are Antal Nagy Budai (soldier, leading a peasant uprising in Transylvania in 1437), György Dózsa (soldier, leading a peasant uprising in the Great Plain in 1514), Mihály Károlyi (the “Red Count”, leader of the 1918 Revolution) and Attila József (a very popular “proletarian poet” in Hungary in the first half of the twentieth century).

The explanation for the above naming anomalies can be traced back in part to the events of the 1940s. After 1945, the ethnic German population was forced to suffer severe measures because some of them supported the Nazi occupation. Regardless of the fact of collaboration with the German invaders, which was not massive in this region, the wealthy, conservative parts of the population were mainly deported to the German territories occupied by the Allies. At the same time, their property (houses, land and other assets) was taken over by Hungarians expelled from Czechoslovakia under the Beneš decrees or by poor peasants from the eastern part of the country. These new settlers were loyal to the new power that allowed them to prosper, and formed a new Hungarian-speaking layer of leadership in the originally German-dominated settlements. Over time, a small number of the displaced Germans migrated back to the villages, but they were no longer able to play the role in village life that they had previously. In the naming as a kind of symbolic occupation of space, the common names among the Germans were replaced by those preferred by the new ruling class. These were either the names of consensual Hungarian historical figures, or the names of people who occupied points of alignment in the Marxist historical narrative—peasant uprisings, leaders of revolutions, representatives of socialist/communist views.

In the post-1989–1990 period, the names of the Communist party-state era have largely disappeared from the local registers. Streets and squares named after the leaders of the 1919 Republic of Councils, the worker movement figures of the Horthy era, representatives of the anti-fascist resistance and the socialist establishment after the Second World War, and the canonised figures of the communists who died in 1956, began to be renamed. The process was made compulsory by a legal provision in 2012, although it has not been implemented everywhere or in all cases.

In Lánycsók, Imre Mező Street was to be renamed (Imre Mező was a member of the international communist movement, shot in Budapest in 1956, and thus remembered as a communist martyr/hero in Hungary), but here it was decided not to change the street name. In Nagynyárád, however, the street named after the communist Máté Zalka (general, fought in Spain in the ranks of the international brigades, died in 1937 fighting the Falangists) became Arany János utca.⁴⁹

Twenty-one streets and squares in Mohács were renamed in 1991. In the course of the action, popular names of the socialist period were replaced either by the former street names or by others. Among the names considered ‘obsolete’ were, for example, Béla Kun (revolutionary, leader of the Republic of Councils), Máté Zalka mentioned above, Imre Sallai and Sándor Fürst (two communist activists executed on false charges in 1932), Endre Ságvári (anti-fascist activist shot dead in a gunfight with the police in 1944) and György Matuzsa (communist secret service officer killed in 1956). The most prominent names were therefore heroes and martyrs of the communist movement. Other names that were changed referred to the socialist era in a more indirect way, such as Úttörőliget (’Pioneer grove’), which recalled the pioneer movement as an important arena for ideological education, or Tanácsház utca (the name referred to the Councils, borrowed from the Soviet administrative system), or Terv utca (Plan Street) and Terv tér (Plan Square) (() recalling socialist plan economy()).

In other parts of the country, the names of heroes who are completely unknown, and only locally important, are currently found in the study area in a negligible number. Only in two settlements (Mohács and Lánycsók) were public places named after locally connected, recognised people found. In Mohács, streets were named after Ede Brand, a central person in the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the 1926 commemoration, a school principal, and János Ete, a local historian and archaeologist who played an important role in the research of the history of the Mohács area. One might assume that the naming of a public space named after Lajos Muck, who was born in Lánycsók, reflects German national identity, but that is not the case. Muck (1886–1944) played an active role in the anti-fascist resistance and the leftist/communist workers’ movement, organising the anti-Nazi movement of German-speaking workers during World War II. The name evokes the practice of the party-state era and not the emergence of a symbolic use of space by the German minority.⁵⁰

If we look at the 21 streets and squares renamed in Mohács in 1991, we can see that in four cases public squares were renamed after local communists, anti-fascists and labour activists (György Matuzsa, Károly Bizony, József Frech and Aladár Hajdenák). After the change, these streets were given politically neutral names instead of local heroes from other backgrounds. Matuzsa utca (Matuzsa Street) thus became Indóház utca (Indóház Street or’House of launch’), Bizony utca (Bizony Street) became Kodály Zoltán utca (Zoltán Kodály Street, Zoltán Kodály was a twentieth century Hungarian music teacher, folk song collector and composer), Frech utca (Frech Street) became Duna utca (Duna Street), and Hajdenák utca (Hajdenák Street) became Dobozi Mihály utca (Mihály Dobozi Street, Mihály Dobozi was a semi-mythical figure who died in 1526 near Esztergom during the anti-Turkish struggles). In summary, the last renaming period, which began in 1990, saw a significant reduction in the number of names associated with locally relevant persons, as names with a communist connection were selected out.

Conclusion

Until the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the study area was characterised by the use of parallel languages. Its geographical nomenclature reflects the cultural and naming characteristics of the indigenous inhabitants of the area (Hungarians) and the settlers of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (Southern Slavs, Germans, Gypsies, Jews), which often correspond well to the structure of their settlement area.

Ethnic/linguistic homogenisation started at the end of the nineteenth century and progressed significantly: at the same time, the use of national minority geographical names was strongly reduced, mainly due to the state action after 1898. The Germanisation processes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are either not perceptible in the region or their impact was so insignificant as to be intangible.

The top-down renaming policies observed in Hungary—with the exception of the period of the Republic of Councils in Hungary (1919), when the territory was under Serbian occupation—can also be observed in the study area. As a result, an almost completely homogeneous Hungarian public domain nomenclature has been created. Within this, the communist naming legacy of the second half of the twentieth century is still dominant, from which practically only the names of communist, anti-fascist (martyrs) heroes have been removed, but not even that in its entirety. The figures of the class-struggle explanation of history, which played a dominant role in the narrative of Marxist historiography, have remained in the public square.

The use of women's names in the name material can be considered negligible, below even the otherwise conservative Hungarian average. Names associated with the process of female emancipation that began in Hungarian society at the end of the nineteenth century do not appear in the region. A woman was named after a place if she was of royal descent, if she was a saint, if she was of noble origin and/or a national hero. In the few cases where a woman of civilian origin was designated by a geographic name in the area, the nominee was the owner of the named business, an employee or a relative of the owner.

The number of names of local heroes is negligible when compared to the national names of national affiliation. The ‘locality’, or local attachment, is no longer formed by actual locally-born politicians and activists, but by the abstract heroes of the Battle of Mohács in 1526.

Questions

• 1. How are different social groups (ethnic, gender, political, religious etc.) represented in the local toponymy?

• 2. What are the driving factors for place naming changes over time?

• 3. How did ethno-linguistic homogenisation affect local place names?

• 4. What is the role of the migration settling waves in local toponymy?

• 5. What is the role of the Battle of (Mohacs) Mohács (1526) in the given street names?