Hungarian fairy land – The names of nations and peoples

Do you know who the Burkus people are? If you google it, you probably won’t find anything or just some Hungarian sites, mostly encyclopedias or dictionaries. If you ask a Hungarian person who the Burkus people are, the answer likely will be ’I don’t know’, and after a little thinking maybe he will add that there should have been a Burkus king somewhere and somewhen.

He would be right: there were numerous Burkus kings and queens, even a Burkus country existed. The Burkus people – the pronunciation is ’burkush’ – are regular characters in Hungarian folk tales, and their country is known for its richness. However, they have another name which is featured in history books and maps, and what we use in everyday conversation. The word ’burkus’ is no longer in use in Hungarian – the „modern” word for Burkus is ’porosz’ (Prussian).

There are several expressions similiar to ’burkus’ – old, ancient names of nations, no longer in use, but some of them are understandable even nowadays. Sometimes these names got a pejorative meaning, so we tend to avoid them. However, in historical context we still use them. And sometimes they got a little „fairy spice” and they still appear in folk or fairy tales, without any secondary meaning.

Ancient	Modern	Meaning
burkus	porosz	Prussians
tót	szlovák, szlovén	Slovakians, Slovenians
rác	szerb	Serbians
oláh1 / vlach	román	Romanian
talján	olasz	Italian
tatár2	mongol, tatár	Mongolians, Tartars
ánglus	angol	Englishmen
szaracén, szerecsen3	–	–
indus	indián, indiai	Native Americans, Indians

¹oláh: oláh can mean a group of the Hungarian Roma people too (oláh cigányok), but in historical context it means Romanian people.

²tatár: during the Mongol invasion of Hungary in the 1240s, every Mongol was called Tartar by the Hungarians because there were a lot of Tartar in the Mongol army. After that for a long time the word ’tatár’ was used for either Mongolians or the „real” Tartars.

³szerecsen, szaracén: szerecsen and szaracén both means ’Saracen’ literally. It was a common term for Muslims – Arabs and Moors, but in Hungarian later even black people were included in the szerecsen category. Despite they have no pejorative meaning, the terms are no longer used and considered rather archaic. Szerecsen also means ’dark’ or ’black’ in Hungarian, though rarely used.

by Alla