Almost every Czech or Slovak search stalls at the same point: the family knows it came from “Bohemia” or “Slovakia,” but not from which village. Because registers are kept by parish, and village names changed with borders and languages, the village is the key that opens the records. This guide shows where to find it, how to handle the name variants and which tools identify an old place. We checked these details in October 2026, and archive portals, access rules and online collections change, so confirm them before you rely on them.
Start with sources in the country of settlement
- Naturalization papers often name the town or village of birth.
- Passenger lists and ship manifests may give a place, though they can be unreliable. A Slovak research guide notes that multiple village names are often used, especially in ship manifests and US-based documents.
- Church records in the immigrant parish, such as baptisms, marriages and funerals, may name the place of origin.
- Obituaries and gravestones sometimes give a birthplace.
- Family papers. Letters, passports and photographs can carry a place name or a return address.
Why the names are so confusing
Between 1867 and 1918 the territory of present-day Slovakia belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, and under Hungarian rule there was strong political pressure to convert place names to Hungarian, according to a Slovak research guide. Present-day official names in Slovakia are in Slovak, and in the easternmost part, dual Slovak and Rusyn names are in use. In the Czech lands, towns often had both Czech and German names. A single village can therefore appear under several names, depending on the record and the date.
Common name elements
| Hungarian | Slovak | German | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nagy | Velká, Veľké, Veľký | Groß | Large or big |
| Kis | Malá, Malé, Malý | Klein | Small or little |
| Alsó | Dolná, Dolné, Dolný | Unter | Lower |
| Felső | Horná, Horné, Horný | Ober | Upper |
Over time a prefix or suffix may have been added to or removed from a village name, so a village listed as “Large” in one record may be plain in another.
Gazetteers and conversion tools
- The 1877 Gazetteer of Hungary (Magyarország helységnévtára) by Dvorzsák was made available online by Pécs University, and an English translation exists, according to the Center for Jewish History’s guide.
- JewishGen’s Greater Hungary list of towns from the 1877 and 1882 gazetteers gives current names, counties and districts, German and other spelling variants.
- A dictionary of Hungarian place names by György Lelkes cross-references names in several languages, according to the same guide, and an online cross-border Hungarian place name dictionary by László Sebők lets you look up the modern equivalent of a historical name, in Hungarian only.
- A Slovak gazetteer with place name changes from 1773 to 1997 is listed in the guide, and the US Board on Geographic Names published official standard names for Czechoslovakia.
- For the Czech lands, the registry of parishes at matriky.online lists registers by originator and municipality, with a map.
Find the parish, not only the village
A small village often did not have its own parish, so its baptisms may be in the register of a neighboring parish. A Slovak reference, Cirkevné matriky na Slovensku zo 16.-19. storočia, lists every village and what records exist in the archives for each, and has a short dictionary of terms in Latin, Hungarian and German. For the Czech lands, a parish table by archive and municipality helps. See our guide to Czech parish registers and our guide to Slovak records.
A method
- List every document that gives a place of birth or last residence.
- Write down each spelling and each language form.
- Look the names up in the gazetteers, in the Czech, Slovak, German and Hungarian forms.
- Check the county or district and the period, since boundaries changed.
- Identify the parish that covered the village.
- Search the registers for the parish, using the portals in our websites comparison.
Illustrative composite (not a real family): A reader’s great-grandfather’s naturalization papers name a town with a Slovak spelling, while his ship manifest gives a Hungarian-looking name. A gazetteer shows that both refer to the same village in the former Hungarian county, and the village belonged to the parish of a larger neighboring town. She searches that parish’s registers and finds his baptism.
Using the census to find the parish
The Czech census of 1869 recorded each person’s place of birth, which the FamilySearch wiki calls an important element of that census. If you can find your ancestor’s household in a census, the place of birth may point you to the right village and parish. See our guide to civil records and censuses.
Border areas and mixed communities
- Sudeten and German-speaking areas. Villages may have a German name in the registers and a Czech name today, and the registers are often in German.
- Eastern Slovakia. Dual Slovak and Rusyn names are in use, and Rusyn and Ukrainian are written in Cyrillic, so place names cannot be easily transliterated into English spellings, according to a Slovak research guide.
- Hungarian-speaking areas. Villages with large Hungarian-speaking populations may appear under Hungarian names in older records.
Write the name exactly as you find it
Copy each place name letter by letter, including diacritics and any prefix, before you try to correct it. A spelling that looks like a mistake may be the Hungarian or German form, and it may be the key to the gazetteer entry. Note the document and date beside each form, so you can see which names belong to which period.
Common mistakes
- Searching only the modern Slovak or Czech name. Old records use other forms.
- Ignoring the county. Many villages share a name.
- Forgetting the parish. The village may not have had its own church.
- Accepting a manifest spelling. Compare other documents.
- Overlooking Rusyn names in the east. Dual names are in use there.
Continue with the complete tracing guide and the starter guide, and browse Genealogy Research. Sources include a Slovak research strategies guide on the Kingdom of Hungary, the Center for Jewish History’s genealogy guide to the Czech and Slovak republics, a guide to place-name terminology and the matriky.online registry of Czech parishes.
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