Hungarian Name Days: What They Are, How to Celebrate, and the Calendar

Walk into a Hungarian office on a quiet weekday and you may find a cake on the desk, a bunch of flowers by the coffee machine and people shaking one colleague’s hand. Nobody has a birthday. It is that colleague’s névnap, name day.

Every Hungarian given name has its day in the calendar, usually the feast of a saint, and that day belongs to everyone who carries the name. This guide explains what a name day is, where the custom comes from, what to say and bring, and how names get into the calendar, with a month-by-month table of the best-known dates at the end.

For the rest of the Hungarian year, from carnival to Christmas, see our calendar of Hungarian holidays and traditions.

📋 At a Glance

	Hungarian name days
What it is	The feast day of the saint whose name you carry
How many	At least one per name, sometimes several
The greeting	“Boldog névnapot!” (BOHL-dohg NAYV-nah-poht)
Usual gifts	Flowers, a box of chocolates, a bottle of wine
At the office	The person celebrating brings cake or sweets
Where to check	Any Hungarian calendar, under each date
Public holiday	No

A family celebrates a name day in the parlor. Mihály Munkácsy, “Grandfather’s Name Day” (Nagyapó névnapja), 1886. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What a Name Day Is, and Why It Can Beat a Birthday

A name day is the feast day of the saint, or the calendar entry, that shares your given name. Katalin celebrates on 25 November, the feast of St Catherine; József on 19 March, the feast of St Joseph; László on 27 June, the feast of King St Ladislaus.

The difference from a birthday is that a name day is public. Hungarian calendars print the day’s names under each date, so anyone can see that today is Mihály’s or Anna’s day. Colleagues, neighbors and friends greet you without being told, while a birthday is something people know only if you tell them, and it is mostly celebrated at home. For many Hungarians, especially at work, the name day is the occasion people actually mark.

That public side is old. In the village custom described in the Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, the name day of a family member was a small household event, but the name day of the man or woman of the house brought relatives, neighbors and village children to the door. Guests did not wait for an invitation: being let in was itself the honor. Children received small presents or a little money, adults were asked in for a drink, and the evening often ended in dancing. The liveliest greeting customs belonged to the autumn and winter name days, and a few names, such as Sándor, József and Mihály, were celebrated especially widely.

Sources, read on 1 November 2026: the Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, “névnapozás” (Hungarian Electronic Library, MEK); the feast dates from Bálint Sándor, Ünnepi kalendárium I and II (MEK).

From Saints’ Feasts to the Name-Day Calendar

The name day grew out of the Catholic calendar, where each day honors one or more saints. A person named after a saint kept that saint’s feast as their own, and Bálint Sándor’s Ünnepi kalendárium, the standard work on Hungarian feast days, keeps calling these days a saint’s névünnep, name feast. On 19 March, József’s day, the older farmers around Szeged treated the day as a half holiday even though it was not red in the calendar, and would not dig the soil with tools that day. On 27 December, János’s day, the church blessed wine, the Szent János áldása, which families drank for health and poured into their barrels.

The custom did not stay Catholic. The névnapi köszöntő, the name-day greeting song or verse, took shape in Hungary in the 16th century in Protestant schools, and the greeters usually ended their verses by asking for a gift. In Debrecen the greeters carried a special lantern; in some places a clay pot filled with ash was smashed at the door as a wish for plenty. Because Catholics and Reformed Christians did not always use the same calendar, the same name can still fall on different days for the two: János is 24 June for one and 27 December for the other.

The modern civil calendar came with the official list of given names. In 1971 Akadémiai Kiadó published Ladó János’s Magyar utónévkönyv, the Hungarian book of given names, prepared at the Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences after consultation with the ministries of justice and the interior. It listed 895 female and 932 male names and closed with a month-by-month table of name days. The book went through seven editions by 1990, and its 2016 edition lists 3,812 names.

Sources, read on 1 November 2026: Bálint Sándor, Ünnepi kalendárium, March 19 and December 27 (MEK); the Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, “névnapi köszöntő” and “névnapozás” (MEK); Raátz Judit, “Ötvenéves a Ladó-féle utónévkönyv”, Névtani Értesítő 44 (2022).

How Hungarians Celebrate

The greeting. Say “Boldog névnapot!”, roughly BOHL-dohg NAYV-nah-poht: happy name day. The Hungarian é sounds like the ay in “say”, and the o is short. The other phrase you will hear is “Isten éltessen!”, ISH-ten AYL-tesh-shen, may God keep you, which also works for birthdays.

The present. Keep it small. Flowers are the classic for a woman, a bottle of wine or pálinka for a man, and a box of chocolates suits anyone. If you want to add a Hungarian touch, our pálinka guide explains the fruit spirit.

At the office. The person celebrating usually brings something for everyone: a cake, a tray of pastries or a box of sweets, set out for colleagues to come by, shake hands and say the greeting.

At home. Friends call or send a message in the morning, and close family may come round in the evening, just as relatives and neighbors once did on the host’s name day.

What a Visitor Will Notice, and What to Do

• The day’s names are everywhere. Look at any Hungarian calendar and you will see one or more names under each date.
• A colleague or host has a name day. Say “Boldog névnapot!” and shake hands. If you are staying with a family or working alongside someone for a while, a few flowers or a bar of good chocolate is enough.
• You are offered cake or a drink. Accept it and say the greeting; that is the whole point of bringing it.
• Two dates for one name. Many names have more than one day. Ask which one the person keeps rather than guessing.
• Your own name. If your name has a Hungarian form, it probably has a name day. Ask a Hungarian friend to look it up; John is János, Michael is Mihály, Catherine is Katalin, Stephen is István.

Source for the public-holiday status, read on 1 November 2026: §102(1) of the Labor Code (Act I of 2012) at njt.jog.gov.hu, which lists no name day.

How Names Get Into the Calendar

A Hungarian baby can only be registered with a name from the official list of given names, the utónévjegyzék. Parents who want a name that is not yet on the list can ask for it to be added. Those requests have long been judged by the given-name committee of the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, the successor of the academy’s Institute for Linguistics. Its published principles check that the name follows Hungarian spelling with the 44 letters of the Hungarian alphabet, that it is clearly male or female, that an “ancient Hungarian” name is attested in medieval sources, and that the name will not expose the child to teasing.

The rules were tightened in 2025. Act LXV of 2025 requires a scientific body’s opinion and the involvement of experts when names are added, and raises the list itself to the level of a ministerial decree. The list now in force is Decree 10/2025 (IX. 3.) on the Hungarian list of given names.

The list does not set name days. These come from the saints’ calendar and from the name books, above all the Ladó book and its later editions. That is why a name can have several days: Antal belongs both to St Anthony the Abbot on 17 January and to St Anthony of Padua on 13 June, and Pál to the Conversion of St Paul on 25 January and to Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June.

Sources, read on 1 November 2026: Act LXV of 2025 and Decree 10/2025 (IX. 3.) at njt.jog.gov.hu; the given-name committee’s principles at nytud.hu; Raátz Judit, “Ötvenéves a Ladó-féle utónévkönyv”; Bálint Sándor, Ünnepi kalendárium I and II.

The Best-Known Name Days, Month by Month

These are the traditional feast days of some of the best-known Hungarian names, one or more per month. A full Hungarian calendar lists names for every day of the year and often adds further dates for the same name.

Month	Date	Name	Note
January	17 January	Antal	Also 13 June
January	25 January	Pál	Also 29 June
February	3 February	Balázs
February	14 February	Bálint	St Valentine’s Day
March	12 March	Gergely
March	19 March	József	Once a half holiday around Szeged
April	24 April	György
May	1 May	Fülöp, Jakab
June	13 June	Antal	St Anthony of Padua
June	24 June	János	Also 27 December
June	27 June	László	King St Ladislaus
June	29 June	Péter, Pál
July	22 July	Magdolna
July	26 July	Anna	Anna balls are held around it
August	10 August	Lőrinc
August	20 August	István	Also a national holiday
September	29 September	Mihály
October	20 October	Vendel
October	26 October	Dömötör
November	11 November	Márton	St Martin’s Day
November	19 November	Erzsébet	St Elizabeth of Hungary
November	25 November	Katalin
November	30 November	András
December	4 December	Borbála
December	6 December	Miklós	Mikulás
December	13 December	Luca
December	27 December	János	Wine blessing
December	31 December	Szilveszter	New Year’s Eve

Three of these days have their own guides: 20 August, St Stephen’s Day, St Martin’s Day and Mikulás on 6 December.

Sources, read on 1 November 2026: each date is the feast as given in Bálint Sándor, Ünnepi kalendárium I (December to June) and II (July to November), MEK; the two dates for János from the Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, “névnapozás”.