THE BURGENLAND BUNCH NEWS - No. 5
ISSUED AS REQUIRED BY Gerald J. Berghold
Feb.12, 1997
(all rights reserved)

This edition of the newsletter primarily concerns German-Hungarian names for
the months of the year appearing in old church records as well as the use of
the German umlaut. Hungarian diacritical marks have been omitted. Thanks to
Sue Straw, member of the Bunch, for help with the Hungarian portion of the
following:

GERMAN, OLD FORM(S), HUNGARIAN
Januar, Eismonat januar, boldogapzony hava
Februar, Regenmonat februai, telutohava bojselo(?) hava
März, Windmonat marcius, bojmas (?)hava
April, Ostermonat aprilis, Szt Georgy hava
Mai, Weidemonat Majus, punkosa hava
Juni, Brachet Weisemonat junius, Szt Juan hava
Juli, Heuert Heumonat julius, Szt Jakoub hava
August, Ernting Hitzmonat augusztus, Kiscspzony hava
September, Fruchmonat Scheiding 7ber 7bris zeptember, Szt Mihaly hava
October, Weinmonat Gilbhard 8ber 8bris oktober, Mindszent hava
November, Reifmonat Nebelmonat 9ber 9bris november, oszuto, Szt Andras hava
Dezember, Julmonat Christmonat 10ber 10bris december, Karacsony hava

("Hava" means "month" in Hungarian. Not certain about those with ?. Most can
be translated as "the fruit month", "the wine month", "the month of cold",
"All Saint's month", "the month of harvest", "the month of wind" etc.

OTHER FORMS
Often the name of a feast day or other church holiday may be substituted for
the month name and/or date. This can be particularly disturbing when local
saints are involved, as an intimate knowledge of religious history is
necessary to decipher who the saint may be and what day and month is (was)
celebrated locally.

For instance the patron saint of the Burgenland is St. Martin, born 316 AD in
Sabaria (near Szombathely). He became Bishop of Tours and his birthday
(November 11) is a legal holiday (Martinmass) in the Burgenland. Everyone
eats goose and the village drummer marches around and beats his drum. After
this day, the vintage from last year becomes "old wine". These religious
holidays can also be abbreviated in various ways. Since there are fixed dates
and movable dates based on when Easter falls, as well as calendar changes, I
personally skip the day and mention the holiday in the notes for that
particular record. Some of the more common are:

FEAST (GERMAN) HUNGARIAN
Christmas (Weihnachts) karacsony or karacsony hava
Epiphany (Epiphanias, Erscheinung Christi) ?
Easter (Osternzeit) husvet
Ascension (Himmelfahrt Christi) felemelkedes
Pentecost (Pfingsten) punkosd
St. John the Baptist - June 24 (Johannis des Tufers) Szent Juan hava
St. Peter & St. Paul - June 29 (?) ?
St. James the Elder - July 25 (Szent Jakub) hava
Transfiguration - Aug 6 (Verklrung) ?
St. Bartholomew - Aug 24 (?) ?
St. Michael - Sept. 29 (Michaelis Fest) Szent Mihaly hava
All Saints' - Nov 1 (Allerheiligen) Mind Szent hava

Sue Straw came upon many of these in Hungarian church records where for 20
years the priest used something like "born on the 22nd day of Saint Andrew's
month-(November)- (Szent András hava)" or "born on karacsony (Christmas)."
Also see "If I Can - You Can Decipher Germanic Records", written by Edna M.
Bentz, 13139 Old West Ave., San Diego, CA 92129.


UMLAUTS (GERMAN DIACRITICAL MARK)

I received the following note from Joe Gilly > "John (Lavendoski) tells me
that his system does not recieve my umlauts. Güssing arrived on his system as
Gssing. Henceforth, I'll eliminate the umlauts for everyone. I don't
think that should be a problem. Your umlauts don't come through, but I can
tell what your intent was. I'm using a Mac Performa 600, and I would presume
that the other Bunch members are probably using IBM compatibles. That's
probably the reason." <

Those of you who are familiar with the German language know the importance of
the umlaut (") or double dot over certain vowels. I create them on my system
by using the "ALT (key) with a 3 digit number from the keypad". See Windows
Accessories "Character Map". Alt 129 gives a u with an umlaut over it like ü.
If your system doesn't show, you also have the problem. As my retired
German school teacher cousin says "you MUST use the umlaut when writing
German!" She doesn't use a computer and writes her German umlauts like u"
from her typewriter. Yech! She convinced me to re-edit a 148 page genealogy!
What to do? We could use u" or ue? What does everyone think? Is this only a
MAC problem? I haven't tried to use Hungarian diacritical marks which are
even more important since they add non-English comparable letters to the
Hungarian alphabet. I ignore them and look both places in the dictionary.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY BURGENLAND! (from the Nov./Dec. Burgenländische Gemeinschaft)

1896 - 1000 YEARS OLD AS PART OF HUNGARY
1996 - 1000 YEARS OLD AS PART OF OLD AUSTRIA
1996 - 75 YEARS OLD AS PART OF NEW AUSTRIA


END OF NEWSLETTER-EDITED & DISTRIBUTED BY GERALD J. BERGHOLD