I have always heard that the roots of Hungary as a nation can be traced to the Huns that settled there while invading Europe, and that today people still use the name "Attila" in that country. Is there really a link between Hungary and the Huns, or is it an urban legend?
As /u/bemonk points out, there are barely any similarities between the magyars and huns, the latter which inhabitated the carpathians 600 years before the magyars even arrived and before the magyars were the Avars
I believe there were hungarian kings that claimed descent from attila but claiming descent was a very common way to raise their own prestige (kinda like how the windsor family has a geonology tracing their ancestors back to odin) and hungarian nationalists also do it too
Well it's a medieval legend rather than an urban one.
The most influential and probably original version of that claim is Simon of Kézas chronicle Gesta Hungarorum (Deeds of the Hungarians) which is one of many medieval chronicles of that type - e.g. there's Gesta Danorum for the Danes, and there's a second one for Hungarns too with an unknown author (thus it's called the Anonymous Gesta, where people set out to write down the folkelore history of their people, usually with the authors' own interpolations and guesses as they needed to trace their origin back to the bible. (usually by finding some Old Testament figure with a name that seems familiar to you) Another example of that is our king here in Sweden is Carl XVI Gustav, even though there's only been 10 with that name - because the number is derived from a medieval list of kings that was padded out with fictional figures.
Anyway, back to Simon. He starts with an entertaining theological argument spanning several pages on how the Hungarians are not the literal spawn of the devil no matter what others might say. Then he traces the Hungarians back to the giant Ménrót, probably a figure from Magyar legend, and him in turn back to Japheth, son of Noah. Ménrót supposedly had two sons Hunor and Mogor, (4) who then were the progenitors of the Hunsa and Magyars. The latter being what Hungarians call themselves, and are called in several other languages. ('Hungarian' itself is derived from the Hun myth)
Anyway, according to Simon, Attila goes on to conquer practically all of Europe, much much more than he actually did. Which is to be expected since Attila's fame is the whole motive to claim Hunnish ancestry in the first place. So among other places, Attila conquered Denmark, Norway, Morocco and Spain. (12-13) Since the Huns were the captains of the army, Hispania got its name from that rank in the Hunnic language - ispán. In reality Attila never went near those places, that's not actual Hunnic but the Hungarian word, and the name Hispania was demonstrably used centuries before Attila anyway. It's a great example both of a folk etymology, and how those etymologies were used to invent these kinds of claims. From a modern perspective it's all pretty ridiculous but in the middle ages this account was not that different in its methods from other chronicles, and was treated as fact.
Numbers in parenthesis refer to the paragraph numbering in Veszprémy and Schaer's edition of Simon's Gesta, which I can recommend. It's got the Latin and English texts on facing pages and extensive notes, making it accessible even for a non-medievalist.
Anyway, the Hungarian use of the name 'Attila' is actually from this now-traditional belief, which some Hungarians even cling to today. But note that even by the mythic version, Hungarians are cousins rather than direct ancestors. This may have been required to explain the fact that Hungarians did not arrive in Europe until the 9th century (see Árpád), well after the Huns had vanished.