How to get a Hungarian certificate without travelling
Documentary Hungary demands a double mental map: that of today's country — modern, with a central electronic registry — and that of pre-1920 Greater Hungary, three times larger, whose records now live in Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. For Brazil's Hungarian diaspora (São Paulo has a century-old community), the first question is never 'how to request' — it is 'in which country is my ancestor's record'.
The modern system: the electronic anyakönyv
Since 2014 Hungarian records live in the electronic registry (EAK) — and any anyakönyvi hivatal (the municipal registry office, inside the town hall) issues the kivonat (extract) of records in the system. The ingenious detail: old paper records are digitised INTO the system when someone requests them — the first request migrates the record, the following ones come out on the spot.
The modern kivonat comes out in a format that serves international uses (with the EU multilingual forms available for European circulation).
The 1895 boundary
Hungarian civil registration begins in October 1895 — before that, life is in the church books: Catholic, Reformed (Calvinist — Protestant Hungary is large), Lutheran and Jewish (the Hungarian-Jewish community kept its own registers, today an essential source). The collections were massively microfilmed and the National Archives (MNL) digitised a great deal — online research covers a good part of the 19th century.
The Trianon warning
The Treaty of Trianon (1920) handed over two thirds of the territory: if the ancestor was born in Kassa, Kolozsvár or Újvidék, the record is today in Košice (Slovakia), Cluj (Romania) or Novi Sad (Serbia) — in those countries' archives, frequently still in Hungarian. The research starts by locating the town on TODAY's map; the corridor can change country entirely.
The typical route
Kivonat from the anyakönyvi hivatal (written request; power of attorney for third parties) → apostille at the competent ministry in Budapest → dispatch → sworn Hungarian translation in Brazil — rare and expensive; the EU multilingual forms save money in Europe, and the Hungarian-Brazilian community keeps the few living translators fully booked.
Hungarian names come inverted (surname first: Kovács János = János Kovács) and spellings vary with the era (cs/ts, eö/ö). In the family's Brazilian documents, the name may appear in either order — list the forms before any search.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Hungarian consulate issue certificates?+
The path is the anyakönyvi hivatal — but Hungarian consulates broker kivonat requests for the diaspora more often than the European average; it is worth consulting the São Paulo one before designing the mission.
My ancestor was from 'Hungary' but the town is Romanian today. Now what?+
That place's post-1895 civil record is in Romania (the local starea civilă or archive); the earlier parish ones, in Romanian archives — many in Hungarian. The corridor becomes Romanian, with Hungarian reading. It is the Trianon pattern.
Informative content about request procedures. We do not cover citizenship or visa eligibility. Rules and amounts may change; always confirm before acting.