Hungarian ethnicity indicates genetic origins in Hungary in Central Europe. The overwhelming majority of Hungarians are of Magyar descent, being the people who conquered the region and settled there in the ninth and tenth centuries. Indeed the name Hungary or Hungarian derives from the Greek Byzantine word for Magyar. Over 90% of all Hungarians are of distinct Magyar ethnicity. There are a number of substantial minorities, notably Romani people who make up over 3% of the population of Hungary, while there are some 180,000 Germans living in Hungary or nearly 2% of the population.[1] Other minorities, of which there are between 20,000 and 35,000 people each, include Slovaks, Croats, and Romanians from neighboring countries. Like much of Europe, a significant community of Ukrainians has emerged in Hungary since 2022.[2]
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Hungarian history

Hungary is a country with a complex history, particularly so from an ethnic perspective. It was inhabited by Germanic and various Indo-European peoples in ancient times such as the Celts and the Marcomanni, while during the period it was settled to some extent by the Romans as a frontier region on the northern border of the empire. During the Dark Ages which followed the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, it was largely inhabited by the Slavs and other peoples who came to rule the Balkans and much of Eastern Europe. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, a mysterious people known as the Magyars arrived in the ninth century and conquered the region. There is a strong debate as to where these Magyars came from, but the most common theory is that they had migrated extensively from northern Asia around the Ural Mountains or western Siberia in what is now Russia. This theory is based on the Hungarian language being Uralic, suggesting an origin in this part of Asia.[3]
The Magyars conquered the Great Hungarian Plain and carved out the Kingdom of Hungary by the tenth century. It became one of Europe’s more powerful monarchies during the High Middle Ages, but it fell victim to the growing power of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century as King Louis II was defeated and killed at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. Thereafter much of Hungary was ruled by the Ottomans through to the eighteenth century, but the title of King of Hungary passed to the Austrian House of Habsburg. In the eighteenth century, the Austrians reconquered Hungary and incorporated it into their empire.[4]
Hungary’s significance within the wider Austrian Empire was acknowledged in 1867 when the Austrian Empire was constitutionally rearranged as the dual Empire of Austria-Hungary. This arrangement only lasted for half a century before the collapse of the Habsburg empire at the end of the First World War led to the emergence of an independent Hungary. This newly independent state, unfortunately, leaned to the far-right and entered the Second World War on the side of Nazi Germany. The Holocaust of Europe’s Jews entered perhaps its most brutal stage here in 1944 when approximately 400,000 of the country’s 750,000 Jews were killed in just over six months, altering the ethnic landscape of the country dramatically, though a recent MyHeritage study has revealed that many people in Hungary continue to have extensive Jewish heritage. In the aftermath of the Second World War and the Cold War Hungary has emerged as one of the countries in Europe that has some of the smallest ethnic minority communities of any state in the European Union.[5]
Hungarian culture

The culture of Hungary is reflective of its position between Germany to the north and the Balkans to the south in that it leans in terms of written culture towards Germany, but contains many folk elements in its dance and music which are more akin to Balkan traditions. For instance, Hungarian folk dances such as the ugrós or jumping dance or karikázó, a type of circle dance performed by women, lean more toward Romania and other parts of the Balkans than they do to Germanic traditions.[6] There are also very many aspects of Hungarian culture that are uniquely its own, notably its distinct written language and literary forms. In sports, Hungary is one of the world’s great overachievers. It ranks 8th in terms of the most gold medals ever won at the Summer Olympics and all seven countries ahead of it (the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, France, Italy, and Germany) have or have had far larger populations than it.[7] The famous Hungarian football team of the 1950s, led by Ferenc Puskás and nicknamed ‘The Magical Magyars’, are considered one of the greatest teams of all time.[8] Hungarian cuisine is also unique. A great many dishes which a visitor to Budapest will encounter are not well known of outside of Hungary’s borders, but goulash, a soup or stew of meat and vegetables which most likely dates back to when the Magyars first arrived in Hungary in the ninth and tenth centuries, is known globally. However, the dish has changed over time, as most recipes today include large amounts of paprika which was not introduced into Europe until the sixteenth century.[9]
Hungarian languages
Hungarian is the only official language in Hungary. It is a Uralic language, a family of languages that are spoken primarily in parts of northern and eastern Europe and much of northern Asia in Siberia in Russia. As such, the presence of a Uralic language in Hungary is something of an outlier, indicative of the somewhat mysterious origins of the Magyar people who colonized Hungary in the ninth and tenth centuries. It is the first language of over 98% of Hungarians and is a comparatively complex one. For instance, there are 44 letters in the Hungarian alphabet. The next most widely spoken languages are English, which is spoken by about one in six Hungarians, and German, a foreign language held by over 10% of the Hungarian people. Beyond these, there are small numbers of people who speak a wide range of other European languages such as Russian, French, and Italian, as well as the tongues of neighboring countries such as Romania and Croatia.[10]
Explore more about the Hungarian ethnicity
- MyHeritage DNA at MyHeritage
- Ethnicities around the world at MyHeritage
- What Is My Ethnicity? How MyHeritage Estimates Ethnicities at MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Where's My Ethnicity?!: Why An Ethnicity Might Not Show Up In Your DNA (and How To Find Evidence Of It Anyway) at MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Hungarian historical record collections on MyHeritage
- Hungary’s Secret: Study by MyHeritage reveals that Hungary has the world’s second largest percentage of population with Jewish ancestry on the MyHeritage blog
References
- ↑ Hungary. CIA World Factbook
- ↑ How many Ukrainian refugees are there and where have they gone?. BBC
- ↑ Magyars. New World Encyclopedia
- ↑ Battle of Mohács. Encyclopedia Britannica
- ↑ Hungary profile - timeline. BBC
- ↑ Hungarian Folk Dance- revised. Folkdance Footnotes
- ↑ Average number of medals won per capita at the Summer Olympics from 1896 to 2020. Statista
- ↑ Hungary's Golden Squad: the greatest football team never to win it all?. The Guardian
- ↑ Goulash. Encylopedia Britannica
- ↑ WHAT MAKES THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE SO SPECIAL?