Different surnames, can this be the same person? Hungarian research

LuciaV

Hello everyone, I’m here with another mystery question.

My 7th great-grand father Jozef Dobiáš was born/baptized on 14 SEP 1782 to parents Juraj (Georg) Dobiáš and Mária Paulike.

I found the parents marriage record, they got married on 5 NOV 1780. Juraj was 18 and Mária was 16. (1st page, 2nd record from the bottom)

Then the familysearch search engine recommended 3 additional children for this couple

Katarína – 30 JAN 1785

Štefan – 9 SEP 1787

Juliana – 2 FEB 1790

All three of these kids have their parents listed as Juraj and Mária Dobiáš (no maiden name for the mother).

Since I didn’t find Juraj nor Mária’s death record after their last child (Juliana) was born, I decided to check the baptism records manually to see whether the index didn’t butcher the parents names on other possible kids’ records (which would mean they would not get recommended as Jozef’s siblings) before settling on the family’s move from the village.

This is where it gets weird. I found 6 more children.

Mária – 28 MAR 1793

Barbora – 5 AUG 1795

Anna – 8 FEB 1798

Ján – 30 SEP 1801

Ondrej – 9 AUG 1804

Barbora – 25 OCT 1806.

Their parents are listed as Juraj Dobiáš and Mária MIKULEJE tho.

All 10 children were born in Klíž (Kolos) and I checked their godparents as well. The two oldest (Jozef and Katarína) have Ján Basstrnák and Katarína Duda (Katarína’s were hard to read but I think it’s the same two people) and the rest of the kids (Starting from Štefan and ending with the 2nd Barbora) have all the same godparents listed: Štefan Duda and Eva Kňazeje.

First I thought that maybe Mária PAULIKE died (I only checked for her death starting after Juliana’s birth in 1790 at first) and Juraj then remarried and took another Mária (MIKULEJE) as his wife. The mother of Katarína, Štefan and Juliana could be either of those Márias. So starting in late 1782 I checked the death records but I didn’t find any Mária, wife of Juraj dying. Nor did I find any Juraj Dobiáš marrying Mária again after his first wedding in 1780. I only found Juraj Dobiáš marrying Katarína Varga in the 1780s but it was a first marriage for both of them and they went on having a different set of children that I checked.

So here we have

a)     Mária PAULIKE, getting married to Juraj Dobiáš in 1780 and having a son Jozef with him in 1782, not dying in the Kolos records (I searched from 1782 till around 1815-ish)

b)     Mária MIKULEJE, never getting married to Juraj Dobiáš (at least not in the Kolos records) and having 6 children with him

c)      a Mária (could be either of them) having 3 children with Juraj Dobiáš

 

Could this even be the same Mária? Is there any possibility? If yes, why the sudden name change in the records?

If not, I’m working with a scenario of 2 different families. Juraj and Mária PAULIKE having (probably) 2 children and then leaving Klíž and Juraj and Mária MIKULEJE, getting married outside of Klíž, then moving to Klíž and having (probably) 8 children here.

I’m looking for some input from the community, it’s always better to have more opinions and a second pair of eyes.

Thanks!

StH31

It's possible that this is the same family, but it is also possible for two  Juraj Dobiáš to be alive at the same time in the same villages. People often had dozens of children and weren't particularly original in naming them.

However, human error is abundant in parish registers/records; from my own research (also featuring one or two misnamed mothers), I can say that things get easier the more information is added. Look for house numbers, parents, witnesses, and also take a look at neighbouring entries. You may also find the couple in question (or one of their children) bearing witness to someone else's wedding.

LuciaV

Yeah, sadly house numbers weren't a thing yet in the records, all of the records only say "Kolos".

And exactly, I do realize it could have been a completely different couple of Juraj and Mária, it's just the absence of a marriage record in Kolos for them that is throwing me off.

I will check to see if they were witnessing something or maybe were godparents to someone. Thanks for the tip!

I also checked death records and I did find Juraj Dobiáš (age did match) but it only said he was married. Wife's name was missing. The death records were very inconsistent in general. For adult men some only said "married" while other did specifically state "husband of...". Couple of years after I did find a widow Mária Dobiáš (again, her age was matching) dying but again... No maiden name. Just Dobiáš. Kinda frustrating. But I'm still searching.

WilbergClarkN

My suggestion is far out there: Is it possible that it's a handwriting or transcription error? We often see names transposed in census records due to those types of things; is it possible that happened here?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

It's hard to do with this style of marriage record that doesn't identify parents, but sometimes researching a person's siblings will turn up the key piece of evidence, such as a record using both surnames, or naming a place of origin.

I don't know about Kolos specifically, but I do know that surnames in some places in northern Hungary were still in something of a state of flux in the 1700s. I haven't encountered (or done) a proper study of the subject, but my theory is that the intersection of German-style married names (which is the same as English style) with Hungarian name usage (where married names didn't just replace one surname with another) resulted in all sorts of ambiguity, and of course ambiguity leads to variability.

(In the 18th-19th centuries, Hungarian usage was pretty simple: [surname] [given name] was always the maiden or birth name, because the married name had the -né suffix and used the man's given name, not the woman's. If Szabó Mária married Kovács János, her married name was Kovács Jánosné. She could maybe be Kovácsné Mária, but Kovács Mária would've been her probably-eldest daughter, not her. Unfortunately, unless you're researching in an all-Hungarian [probably Calvinist/Reformed] village, you can't assume that the register recorded names according to this usage, however. Both Slovak and German speakers automatically replaced just the surname for married women, just as English speakers do, and then it all got written down in Latin, so you can't tell what language the clerk or the participants actually used.)

LuciaV

@WilbergClarkN Oh, I've seen my fair share of wrongly transcribed names but this is not a transcription error. You can see the names quite clearly on the records. Definitely two different names.

@Julia Szent-Györgyi I'm a bit familiar with the Hungarian naming style, I've seen some older women use it still when I visited Hungary. But I've never encountered it in my research. Mostly cuz I don't research the southern part of Slovakia or Hungary itself. And yeah, all my ancestors were Roman Catholic so far. 99% of my research the women always kept their maiden names in all the records. If I remember correctly I've only seen them using their husbands' last names in the 1869 census records and maybe some death records.

I'm gonna try finding Juraj's siblings. There is Ján Dobiáš getting married on the same day as Juraj so I may start there.