I am currently an undergraduate student working on a research project that is examining the minority of the Magyar immigrant coal miners in Southern West Virginia, especially through a musical lens as a way of examining the cultural transmission between groups of people. This document shows the origin of the miners, and interestingly in certain communities native white populations are actually in the minority (table 477). My primary question is; at this time is there a reason they used the term "Magyar" rather than Hungarian, or from Austro-Hungary in this document? Why is Irish, Scottish, or English missing from the percentages (perhaps included with some other group??) What are some resources that you would use as a researcher to determine the background of these people? Thanks!
I’m extremely interested in this as my entire dads side of the family originally cane over from Hungary and worked directly in the West Virginia coal mines then moved to northern Pennsylvania...... my last name is Chuzie..... literally the only family with that last name in the country but I can’t find anything on it
The term 'Magyar' is the Hungarian term for 'Hungarian'. It's used there because it is talking about ethnicity. "Austro-Hungarian" was not an ethnicity, and Kingdom of Hungary which existed as an entity within the Austro-Hungarian empire was far from being just Hungarians; it included Slovakia, most of today's Romania, parts of today's Ukraine and less directly it also contained Croatia and Slavonia (which was its own kingdom but in union with the Hungarian Kingdom as the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, all within Austria-Hungary).
So Slovaks could be termed Hungarians as a matter of nationality but not ethnicity. The term 'Magyars' makes it clear you're talking about ethnic Hungarians wherever they came from.
Lumping Hungarians, Slovaks, Croats, Romanians, Jews, Austrians, Ukranians, Romani, Slovenes, Bosnians, Czechs and others together as 'Austro-Hungarian' would be of little practical use. I mean it doesn't tell you if those people have any sense of kinship or even a language in common.
It's worth noting that "Magyar" is the Hungarian term. The modern Hungarian state, for example, is in its own language called "Magyarorszag," and the ethnonym is "Magyarok." "Hungarian" is a Greek (and possibly ultimately Slavic and Turkic)-origin term that entered English via Latin.