Hungarian2 syllablesNational poet
Meaning: the Hungarian Alexander, and the name of the poet of the 1848 revolution.
Sándor
| Origin | Hungarian form of Alexander, from Greek Alexandros |
|---|---|
| Meaning | "Defender of men", from Greek alexein (to ward off, defend) and anēr, genitive andros (man) |
| Pronunciation | SHAHN-dor. A lone Hungarian s is always sh, so the name begins SHAHN- and never SAN-; the á is long and the stress is at the front |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rare in America; a major Hungarian name across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, quieter now |
| Variants | Alexander, Alessandro, Alejandro, Aleksandr, Oleksandr, Sandro, Iskandar |
| Nicknames | Sanyi, Sanyika, Sándorka |
| National poet | Sándor Petőfi, 1823–1849, whose Nemzeti dal opened the revolution of 15 March 1848 |
History & meaning
Alexander is a long name in every language and every language has shortened it, but they do not all shorten it at the same end. English took the front and got Alex; Hungarian took the back and got Sándor, dropping the first two syllables and building a new word on what was left. Italian did the same thing and arrived at Sandro. Underneath is the Greek compound alexein and andros, warding off and man — defender of men, and by way of Macedon one of the most widely borrowed names in the world.
In Hungary it belongs to one person. Sándor Petőfi was born Petrovics, into a family of Slovak and Serbian descent, Magyarised his name at twenty, and by twenty-five had written the poems Hungarians quote without attribution because they assume everyone knows them. On 15 March 1848 he read the Nemzeti dal aloud in Pest and the revolution began that day. He joined Bem's army in Transylvania and disappeared at the battle of Segesvár — Sighișoara in Romania today — on 31 July 1849, aged twenty-six; no grave was ever found, which has kept a small industry of theories going since. His four-line poem beginning Szabadság, szerelem, liberty and love, is the most quoted thing in the language.
Why parents choose it
It is grand, it is completely ordinary, and it has the best pet form in Hungarian: Sanyi is about as unpretentious as a nickname gets, which stops Sándor from being heavy. Abroad the s is the only obstacle, and it is a small one to explain.
Middle names for Sándor
The soft -or ending likes a stopped second name: Sándor Bálint, Sándor Tamás, Sándor Gergely, Sándor Antal. The middle names guide covers how to hear the join.
Famous Sándors
Besides Petőfi: Sándor Márai wrote Embers, left Hungary in 1948, and was rediscovered across Europe fifty years later. Sándor Kőrösi Csoma walked most of the way from Transylvania to the Himalaya looking for the origins of the Magyars, did not find them, and compiled the first Tibetan–English dictionary instead, published in Calcutta in 1834. Sándor Ferenczi was Freud's closest Hungarian colleague and the founder of the Budapest school of psychoanalysis.
Consider instead
Alexander is the full form, and Sándor works as an unusual nickname for it. Imre is the other Hungarian name with a saint and a set of serious modern bearers. Miklós matches it for weight and puts the sh at the end rather than the start.