Slovakia Genealogy

Guide to Slovakia ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, and military records.

Country Information
Slovakia is a sovereign state in Central Europe bordered by the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Ukraine, and Hungary. The area had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War when, in October 1918, the Czech lands of Austria (Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia) joined with the Slovak and Ruthenian (Ukrainian) counties of Hungary to create the sovereign Republic of Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became an independent state on January 1, 1993, when Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The official language is Slovak.

Finding Your Ancestors' Town in Slovakia

 * 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.

Regions

 * Since 2002, Slovakia is divided into 8 autonomous regions (region = kraj):
 * These links and the clickable map above lead to detailed instructions and links for genealogy research in each region:



Districts (Counties)
Several districts form a "Region" (Slovak "kraj"). One district (Slovak okres) consists of several "municipalities" (Slovak "obec"). Districts have been units of state administration in Slovakia since the time of the Habsburg monarchy, except for the period from 2004 to late 2013. Today, each district is administered by a "district office" (okresný úrad). In the FamilySearch Catalog, records are listed by district and then municipality, not by region.

Municipality Level Towns

 * To find the district for your town, click on Municipalities and Towns *(Click on "Show".)
 * Clicking on your town will take you to a Wikipedia article. It will give you the name of the district for that town.

Smaller Villages, Hungarian Names, Former Names
The place name you find in U.S. records might be too small to be found in the Wikipedia list. You will need to consult the Genealogy Slovakia Gazetteer to find the larger town that village belongs to. Also, you might have found the Hungarian version of the place name or a name no longer in use. This gazetteer will also help you find the current Slovakian name and county for those cases.

FamilySearch Resources
Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.


 * Facebook Communities - Facebook groups discussing genealogy research
 * Historical Records
 * FamilySearch Center locator map
 * Reference Aids Overview at the FamilySearch Library
 * Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books Coverage Table--shows which records are indexed. It is organized by district, then municipality.

More Research Tools

 * Czech Genealogical Word List
 * German Genealogical Word List
 * Hungarian Genealogical Word List
 * Latin Genealogical Word List
 * Polish Genealogical Word List

Handwriting Lessons on FamilySearch Learning Center:
 * German Paleography Seminar - 10 classes
 * German Paleography Seminar - Lessons on German Handwriting
 * Old German Script
 * Part 1
 * Part 2
 * Part 3 (German Church and Civil Records)

Helps for Latin Records

 * Latin Genealogical Word List
 * These reading aids, prepared for Galicia, which was part of Austria and eventually Poland, will give you extensive help in reading Latin records. These forms were mandated by Austria, where the Catholic church was the state religion. They are typical of  Catholic church records. The vocabulary will also be seen in earlier Catholic records that do no use a columnar form.
 * For detailed description and translation of a Galician Latin birth record, see Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia, Baptismal/Birth Record.
 * For detailed description and translation of a Galician Latin marriage record, see Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia, Marriage Record.
 * For detailed description and translation of a Galician Latin death record, see Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia, Death Record.
 * Latin for Genealogists

Helps for Reading Ruthene Dialect of Russian (Rusyn)
Rusyn, (also known in English as Ruthene, sometimes Ruthenian), is a Slavic language spoken by the Rusyns of Eastern Europe. It is estimated that about 34,000 Slovakians are native Ruthene speakers. Source: Wikipedia


 * Carpathian Reflections--a wide variety of Ruthenian and Ukrainian language helps
 * Ukrainian Transliteration Tool
 * Converting Russian Cursive to Print in One Step
 * Causes of Death in Cyrillic Rusyn Handwriting

The table below shows the alphabet of Slovakia (Prešov) Rusyn.

Helps for Reading Old Slavonic

 * Old Slavonic Dictionary