My goodness, I never expected such defensiveness to what I considered to be some interesting factual information.

First of all, you seem to have some misunderstanding of the nature of Ellis Island records. For most of the records, the ship manifests merely record what country the person was from and what language he/she spoke. No "alternatives" were provided from which to choose. And in any case, there were thousands of immigrants who spoke Magyar. I have found many instances of people from present-day Slovakia who were in fact Magyar speaking. Conversely, those from present-day Hungary might speak one of a number of constituent languages. Nor were they asked if they were noble.

My interest was raised while communicating with a descendant of a noble Turócz family (Tomcany/Tomcsany) who told me quite clearly that the family was Slovak. That is when I began to question my earlier assumption that the nobles were largely Magyar. What I did was merely to search for people with names that I knew were noble families from Turócz, especially if they said that they came from that area. To repeat my earlier entry, every single one of them that I looked at indicated that their native language was Slovak.

Further to this issue, I have found that many from these families migrated to Nógrád megye during the 18th and 19th centuries. Nógrád is replete with Slovak villages, where they tended to settle. In time, many of the families became Magyarized, including my particular families of interest. No doubt you may find Rakovszkys in the Ellis Island records who in fact are Magyar speaking, but I propose that this was a later development.

I suggest that you consider that Upper Hungary produced its fair share of nobility. To be a noble of Slovak background makes him no less a noble. And he is no less Hungarian for that matter. Hungary encompassed a wide variety of "ethnicities," which to my mind is one of historic Hungary's most admirable and fascinating features.

You have an interesting family history, one of which you are obviously proud. I would find it interesting to know if the literary works of which you speak were written in Magyar, in what time period, and where they lived when they wrote the works. If, for example, your writer lived in Turócz in 1800 and wrote in Magyar, I would say that offered some evidence that he might have been ethnically (or linquistically) Magyar. Even this, however, would not constitute proof, since Slovak had not yet developed into a truly literary language.

I have no particular knowledge of the Rakovszky family, nor do I speak or read Hungarian (much less Slovak). I personally have no relation to either. My husband's ancestors came from Turócz in the 18th century when they migrated south to Nógrád and then to Jász-Nagykún-Szolnok and became thoroughly Magyarized in the process. Hungarians all.

Janet