Slovakia Place Names

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Slovakia

Place Names

This article will guide you in using the correct form of a Slovakian place name to make it possible to locate Slovakian birth, marriage, and death records efficiently for family history.

Finding Your Ancestors' Town in Slovakia: Your Place Name in the United States

• Genealogical records are organized by geographical locality. Civil registration (government birth, marriage, and death records) and church records (christenings/baptisms, marriages, and burials) were kept at the local level. To search these records, you must know the town where your ancestors lived.
• If you do not know your ancestors' town, follow the advice in the Wiki article, Slovakia Finding Town of Origin to search a variety of records that might provide that information.

Your Place Name in Hungarian, Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovak

• Until 1918, Slovakia belonged to Hungary, with a small part in Ruthenia. Ruthehia was in Ukraine
• After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovakia and the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia and Carpathian Ruthenia formed Czechoslovakia (1918-1939.)
• A separate (First) Slovak Republic (1939–1945) existed during World War II, under Nazi Germany.
• At the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia was re-established as an independent country.
• Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Source, made up of the old regions of Hungarian Slovakia and Russian Ruthenia. Source: Wikipedia: Slovakia

Your immigrant ancestors may report in United States records that they were from Austria, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Ruthenia, Slovakia, or Czechoslovakia. The town where your ancestors lived changed names over the years. There was a Hungarian version of the name when it belonged to Hungary and a modern Slovakian name. The town name you find in United States records might be the historical Hungarian version of the name, the name used when the region was part the names for that town over the years.

Follow These Steps to Find All Versions of the Town Name

• Consult Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer to find all the names for your town over the years.
• In the list of all villages, all three names are given in one master index. Look up the reported name of the your town.
• When you find your town in that index, the link will take you to a page for the town. Under "Old Names", there will be a history of all the name changes of that town.
  • The version of the name used until 1918 is the Hungarian (or Russian for the region that was Ruthenian).
  • The name used from 1918-1993 is the Czechoslovakian name.
  • The name used after 1993 is the Slovakian name.
    

Towns and Villages

The reported residence of your ancestors might be a small village within a town--like our suburbs. Birth, marriage, and death records for the village would be kept in the church records of the major town. They would also appear in catalogs under the larger town's name. In Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer , any small village entry will tell you the larger town in belongs to:

Example of village/town relationship, as reported in Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer

The District (County) and Region for Your Town

For some record systems, you will need to know the District (County) or region for your town.

Follow These Steps to Find the District (County) of the Town

1. In Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer, the district ( county) is listed in a violet bar at the top of the entry page. This will work for towns and villages. Example:
2. Or, find the town in Wikipedia list of municipalities and towns in Slovakia. This will work for towns, not villages. See example below.

Follow These Steps to Find Region of the Town

Find the town in Wikipedia list of municipalities and towns in Slovakia. This will work for towns, not villages. Example:

Finding the Name of the Town Where Your Ancestors Worshipped

But, in order to find church records, you might even use a different town's name! The town where your ancestor lived might not have had a local church for every religion. For example, if the town only had a Catholic church, your Lutheran ancestors may have attended the Lutheran church in a neighboring town. You will need to look for the records under this neighboring town's name.

Follow These Steps to Find Where Each Religion Worshipped

• In the left sidebar of the town's page in Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer, you will find notes on where that village would have attended church for each denomination.
• If the denomination is given in capital letters, such as "LUTH", then the town had its own local church for that religion.
• Be sure to look at the top section of the left sidebar on "Top Sightseeings", where it will list the local churches and the year they were built. Sometimes this is the only indication of churches in that town.
• Towns along the border may have attended a church in Hungary to find the religion of their choice.

Example of an Entry From the Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer

Your Place Name in Slovakia Church and Synagogue Records, FamilySearch Historical Records

The Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1935 collection is a comprehensive, and yet still incomplete, filming of the Slovakian church records of all religions which have been gathered in the various government archives. It is partially indexed, but much more is available only as browsable images. Indexing the records is an on-going project. There are definitely some tricks to locating your records.

Finding Indexed Records: Use the Slovakian Name

The Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books Coverage Table will show which parishes are included in the index for this record collection, and the time periods that have been indexed. The Coverage Table is alphabetized by "Slovakian County".

Using The Sortable Place Name List
to Find Your Slovakian Town and County
As It Will Appear in the Coverage Table

• The Sortable Place Name List covers just the towns with records in the Slovakia Church and Synagogue Records.
• If you know the Hungarian name of your town, find it in the first column of The Sortable Place Name List (click here). Then read across the chart to obtain the Slovakian town and county name.
• If you only know the Slovakian name of the town, click on the down arrow in the title "Slovakian Town" column of The Sortable Place Name List (click here). The entire chart will then re-sort, now alphabetized by Slovakian town. Find your town and its county.
• Now, go back to the Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books Coverage Table.
• Scroll down to the correct county. The entries will be in the format: (County, Town). For example, the town Oborín is in the county of Michalovce. It will be found in the coverage table, alphabetically as "Michalovce, Oborín".
• If your church records are indexed, go to the Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books search engine in order to find your ancestors in the index.

Finding Browsable Records: Use the Slovakian Name

These are digitized images of the pages of the church records. You will have to search them page by page to find your family. Use Slovakia Church Records Reading Aids to help translate them. To find the images for your town parish for any religion:

1. Find the Slovakian name of your town and its Slovakian county, using the above instructions.
2. Click on Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1935.
3. Click on the religion you wish to search. If you do not know the religion, work your way through each available religion until you find the records you need. Start with Roman Catholic and Evangelical (Lutheran) records.
4. Under that religion, click on the county you need.
5. Click on your town, if available.
6. A list of baptism, marriage, and burial records with their respective available time periods will appear. Click on a record, and the images will now appear.

• "Krsty" means baptisms
• "Manželstvá" means marriages
• "Úmrtia" means deaths
• "Birmovaní" means confirmations

Your Place Name in the FamilySearch Catalog

As more records are acquired, they might show up directly in the FamilySearch Catalog, sooner, or even instead of, in the Slovakia Church and Synagogue books collection. So you will want to be able to navigate that, too.

Follow These Steps to Use the Slovakian County and Town
to Find Church Records in the FamilySearch Catalog

1. In the FamilySearch Catalog Search engine (Click here), in the "Place" field, enter "Slovakia" and the county (district).
2. Click on "Places within Slovakia (county)". This will bring up a list of towns.
3. Click on the town you need, A list of record groups will appear for the town. Click on the "Church Records" topic.
4. In the film notes on the left, choose the correct event and time period for your ancestor.
5. Some combination of these icons will appear at the far right of the listing: . The magnifying glass indicates that the records are indexed (but possibly only partially). Clicking on the magnifying glass will take you to the index. Clicking on the camera will take you to an online, digital, browsable copy of the records.

• The microfilm icon appearing alone means the record is not digitized or indexed. It can be studied at the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. You could also hire a professional researcher. Finally, check back frequently to see if it has been digitized.

Your Place Name and Archives: Use the Region for the Town

Archives are kept on the Regional level. Contact information for each regional archive will be found in the Wiki article for each Region.

Follow These Steps Find the Region and the Archive Records Available

1. Find the town in Wikipedia list of municipalities and towns in Slovakia. This will work for towns, not villages. Right at the beginning of the article, you will find the name of the Region you need. Example:

2. Scroll down to "Genealogocal resources" to find a listing of records kept in the archives and the name of the archives. Example:

Your Place Name and Civil Registration Offices

For records in the 1900's, particularly after 1935-ish, the records frequently are still in the local civil registration office. You will want to write to a civil registrar to request records. A civil registration office can cover more than one town. So you will now have to find the civil registration office serving your town or village. This particular list is prepared for locating the office for the purpose of recording a marriage, but the same office records births and deaths.

Follow These Steps to Find the Civil Reistration Office forYour Town

• Study MATRIČNÝ ÚRAD - Slov-Lex, a directory of municipality civil registrars.
• The list does not have a search capability built in. Use your computer's "Find" function to navigate the list.
• The list shows which municipal office covers smaller villages. Example:

Registration Office Town -------------------------------- Towns and Villages Served by That Office

'

In the top right corner, find this feature and set it to "Original". Otherwise, in some cases, you won't see the actual town name, but an English translation. For example, the town Kuchyňa would translate to "the kitchen" in translated mode. The town of Závod translates to "the race".

Your Place Name in Google Maps

Take a look at your town in Google Maps. When you hit a dead end in the records you are using, the next step is to search in neighboring towns. Often, people did not move far away, and you will pick up the family again in a nearby town. Google Maps. can help you see what the neighboring towns are. The Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer also provides a clickable list of neighboring villages and towns. Example:

More Complex Cases

The methods given here are using the simplest and most available (online) reference tools. There are more comprehensive gazetteers available--but they are written in Hungarian and/or not available online. If you are unable to identify your village/town using these resources, ask the community for further help. There are volunteers there who have access to reference aids in the FamilySearch Main Library in Salt Lake City. They may be able to locate the information you need.