#hungarians

The Hungarians, or Magyars, are the people most closely associated with Hungary, though substantial Hungarian communities also live in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Croatia, and Serbia; their own name for the country, Magyarország, reflects the central place of Magyar identity in their national history. They are unusual in Europe because their language is not Indo-European but belongs to the Uralic family, specifically the Finno-Ugric/Ugric branch, and it has long been written in a modified Latin alphabet; its grammar is strongly agglutinative, with extensive suffixing, vowel harmony, and a sound system and morphology that remain recognizably Uralic despite heavy borrowing from Iranian, Turkic, Slavic, Latin, German, and other languages over centuries of contact. Historically, the proto-Hungarians are described as a blend of Ugric and Turkic elements who moved from the eastern steppe world into the Carpathian Basin by the late ninth century, where they established a durable polity that became one of Europe’s long-lasting states; after Christianization, they were drawn into Latin Christendom, but later their region became a frontier zone shaped by repeated invasions, Ottoman occupation, Habsburg rule, and the territorial losses after World War I, all of which deeply influenced Hungarian collective memory and identity. Culturally, Hungarians have maintained a strong sense of distinctiveness through art, music, literature, and folk traditions such as embroidery and ceramics, while modern Hungarian culture remains strongly centered on Budapest and marked by a long tradition of scholarship, science, and artistic achievement that has also extended into a large diaspora abroad.

The majority of Transylvanian Hungarians are Calvinists, largely because of historical developments during the 16th century's Protestant Reformation. At that time, Transylvania was relatively independent and known for its religious tolerance, which allowed Protestant ideas, especially Calvinism, to spread more freely. Calvinism’s focus on personal faith, permission of use of the Hungarian language in worship, and its simpler church structure attracted many ethnic Hungarians. Adopting Calvinism also helped them maintain a distinct cultural and religious identity amid a diverse religious landscape shaped not only by Catholic, but also by Orthodox Christian and Islamic powers in this part of Europe.

Ethnic Hungarian Girl from the village of Bogojevo (Hungarian: Gombos) in West Bačka District, Vojvodina Province, Serbia

Photographed by Moldvai Anikó