Slovakia Place Names

Finding Your Ancestors' Town in Slovakia: Your Place Name in the United States

 * Genealogical records are organized by geographical locality. Civil registration (government birth, marriage, and death records) and church records (christenings/baptisms, marriages, and burials) were kept at the local level. To search these records, you must know the town where your ancestors lived.
 * If you do not know your ancestors' town, follow the advice in the Wiki article, Slovakia Finding Town of Origin to search a variety of records that might provide that information.

Your Place Name in Hungarian, Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovak
Your immigrant ancestors may report in United States records that they were from Austria, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Ruthenia, Slovakia, or Czechoslovakia. The town where your ancestors lived changed names over the years. There was a Hungarian version of the name when it belonged to Hungary and a modern Slovakian name. The town name you find in United States records might be the historical Hungarian version of the name, the '''name used when the region was part the names for that town over the years. Follow These Steps to Find All Versions of the Town Name 
 * Until 1918, Slovakia belonged to Hungary, with a small part in Ruthenia. Ruthehia was in Ukraine
 * After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovakia and the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia and Carpathian Ruthenia formed Czechoslovakia (1918-1939.)
 * A separate (First) Slovak Republic (1939–1945) existed during World War II, under Nazi Germany.
 * At the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia was re-established as an independent country.
 * Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Source, made up of the old regions of Hungarian Slovakia and Russian Ruthenia. Source: Wikipedia: Slovakia
 * Consult Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer to find all the names for your town over the years.
 * In the list of all villages, all three names are given in one master index. Look up the reported name of the your town.
 * When you find your town in that index, the link will take you to a page for the town. Under "Old Names", there will be  a history of all the name changes of that town.
 * The version of the name used until 1918 is the Hungarian (or Russian for the region that was Ruthenian).
 * The name used from 1918-1993 is the Czechoslovakian name.
 * The name used after 1993 is the Slovakian name.

Towns and Villages
The reported residence of your ancestors might be a small village within a town--like our suburbs. Birth, marriage, and death records for the village would be kept in the church records of the major town. They would also appear in catalogs under the larger town's name. In Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer, any small village entry will tell you the larger town in belongs to:

Finding the Name of the Town Where Your Ancestors Worshipped
But, in order to find church records, you might even use a different town's name! The town where your ancestor lived might not have had a local church for every religion. For example, if the town only had a Catholic church, your Lutheran ancestors may have attended the Lutheran church in a neighboring town. You will need to look for the records under this neighboring town's name.

Follow These Steps to Find Where Each Religion Worshipped 
 * In the left sidebar of the town's page in Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer, you will find notes on where that village would have attended church for each denomination.
 * If the denomination is given in capital letters, such as "LUTH", then the town had its own local church for that religion.
 * Be sure to look at the top section of the left sidebar on "Top Sightseeings", where it will list the local churches and the year they were built. Sometimes this is the only indication of churches in that town.
 * Towns along the border may have attended a church in Hungary to find the religion of their choice.