The following is a brief sketch of the common names for the devil in Hungarian and sometimes in related or neighboring languages of the past. This is by no means a thorough and complete review of this topic, as there are many more devil names in Hungarian.

Ördög

The main names for the devil in Hungarian is ördög, which in a more archaic spelling was urdung. It appears to mean the "lord of the dead". (Dög =carion, while Ur=lord). Today the term Dög is only used for
dead animals and human dead is called halot or holt. However who is to say that in the past they were as
specialized in their terminology as today's Hungarian. The closest associations with the word are found in Parthian, Manichean religion where the "ertenk" word was used for the devil. The Scythian Parthians came from north of Persia and conquered and ruled the Persian Empire and the Near East for some 500 years. The Turkic languages also used a word somewhat similar in the name Erlik Khan, (d >l?) for the lord of the dead. Even further back in time in ancient Mesopotamia the Sumerians called the demons Udug, without the r. This same word was borrowed by the Assyrians and Babylonians as "Utuk-ku". The Sumerian term UD also meant a hollow, a hole in the ground similar to Hungarian ODU, meaning a hole or hollow in a tree.

A variant of the name, using the other word for death, which meant sickness, also in some related languages, is "Hal, holt" in Hungarian is found among the linguistic relatives of the Hungarian language, the Finno-Ugric languages as "KUL". Some FinnUgor languages call the chief devil to be KUL-ATER. There is an insect that lives in the forest in Europe which drops on your head and bores into your skull, causing certain sicknesses. This is also called in Hungarian KUL-ancs while another special type of demon or evil spirit is called GOLY-HO. This same term for devil is also found in Sumerian, from ancient Mesopotamia, as the "GAL-LU" demons, based on the word for death. Now this word sounds quite similar also to the English - Scottish ghoul name.

In various FinnoUgrian languages however the term for devil was KUR, which is a term found in Hungarian again in relationship to aging and sickness and desease. In ancient Sumerian the kingdom of the underworld also uses the term KUR, along with other descriptive phrases. Like FinnUgor the Sumerian term KUR also can mean age/aged as well as mountain. In one of the myths of creation the Sumerian God nin_URTA > nim-urta >Nimrod, is sent to fight the evil giant KUR.

Another term for the devil, "the deceiver", in Hungarian is Ármány, which is pronounced much like the Persian "Ariman" who was the brother of Ahura Mazda (wise lord), the god and of course both represented the prince of deceivers, the devil. In Hungarian ármány also means "deceive, intrigue" as he was the great deceiver of men. Early Hungarians had many contacts with the Near East and the Persians and Scythians, which is shown also by the early presence of the Hungarian word for God also in Iran and Anatolian, Hittite. Yet this word is even earlier than these in Mesopotamia where it meant primarily "one", yet in Egypt it also was the title of the god of wisdom/scribes TOTH. Seems weird but Hungarian TUD also means to know and awareness.

The lesser understood and known names and titles of various demons and devils are often remembered in Hungarian as part of curses, which are now often not well understood because their links are often forgotten and are at times only know at times by their relationship to various deseases or sicknesses, which they caused. One of these curses calls on the demon Fene, which is often related by linguists to the biting of a dog in FinnUgor languages, but in reality it is found also in Turkic languages like the Uigurs where it means evil and is also one of their demons.

To be fair the more archaic view of the devil was not the same as in today's Christian views or even in Persian, which is the source of many Hebrew and Christian ideas about demons and the devil. In olden days the devil was a trickster, troublemaker but not always all powerful and totally just bad. He was also an inventor of unusual contraptions and devices. Sometimes the trickster was tricked by a wily human. In contrast to the One God "ISTEN" who was all powerful, uncreated, eternal and all encompassing. The devil was a lot more limited.

Another lesser known term for a devil of the underworld was "mano" which also represented in Hungarian the dwarfs of the underworld, but also at times troublesome devils. This term is probably one of those very early words which were inherited from the Finno-Ugrian language that Hungarian derives from. It is found in such expressions as "Mi a mano?", meaning "what the devil" in English. The name is also found in Finnish as man-ala = "under the earth" referring to the underground kingdom of the dead and the devil. Here the term Ma=earth and ala=under.

There is also a totally different "mano" in Hungarian mythology which was inherited from the Iranians, in the person of Mani, the founder of the Manichean religion, which was once found from France to China. The French Albigenses and the Bulgarian Bogomils were also neo-Manichean religions. According to an early Greek document, the Hungarian Árpád ruler and the Magyar clan was also Manichean in religion. There are some old Hungarian sayings which refer to the death of Mani, at the hands of the Persians who skinned him alive and hung his carcas on a tree as a warning against his followers. This act is found in the Hungarian sayings about Mano.

The names of the lesser devils are often associated with diseases and their names recall a remnant of a much earlier period when many of the peoples of Asia and Europe practiced the shamanistic religions, which tried to heal the body by chasing out the spirit of the sickness causing disease, using various rites and loud exorcisms. There are remnants of such customs in Hungary but there are also many facts pointing to the fact that they were already eastern Christians before they entered Central Europe from the east. The new religion in many cases did not obliterate the memories of the earlier times and especially not the ideas about the demons and devils, as the names for these were just incorporated into the newer religion and their old priests became the new witches or pagan priests of the past. So a few examples of sicknesses and diseases which became associated with demon names.

Hungarian gyenge = weak, sickly

Uigur Turk jany
Cuman Turk yangi
Osman Turk yani

Sumerian gig' ( note the g can in Sumerian at times substitute for Y while g' is often related to ng, and ny or gy in Hungarian)

Hungarian guta related to the idea of strike down, a stroke caused by being very annoyed and upset.

Hungarian mirigy, csoma, nyavalya are also archaic names for diseases as well as archaic demons. It is no coincidence that the common name for a physician or doctor in Hungarian is Orvos, which can be traced back to ancient times to mean a medicine man, or shaman.

Here is a case of a previous Mesopotamian god, who was later to become another name for the devil in Hungary under Christianity. The term comes from DARAMAH = great stag, and is a title of the Sumerian God of land & water, civilization, shamanism, wisdom and a creator of mankind. His other better known name is EN-KI, meaning "lord of earth". He was the younger son of the god of heaven AN preceeded only by EN-LIL, the lord of Air/Sky in importance.

Both Sumerian terms AN =from FinnUgor *sanke ( *s- >ø and nk>n) and LIL from FinnUgor *lewle are also from the old FinnUgor proto-language. In Hungarian these words changed according to the unique Hungarian sound rules to _ÉG =sky ( *s- > ø, nk>g) and LÉL/LÉG =air/atmosphere. The God En-KI uses the FinnUgor term KIL =place/town in meaning rather than Sumerian KI=place/town/earth/land. Turkish also has KIR=earth/land. In Sumerian Mythology EN-KI was the creator of man and was the one god who truly helped and cared for man. Perhaps that is why most Ural-Altaic and even other Shamans always call in prayer with a word that sounds like EY, HEY. Enki's other name EA, HEA sounds like this same common term which has survived even today in folk dancing and folk music which is so steeped in ancient traditions that these common phrases are now just traditional shouts of joy to most, yet it was much more in the past. It is a term which was used also in the past by the soldiers going off to battle as a battle cry, just as it was by the American Indians war cryes.

Of the priests and priestesses who are often associated with the devil today, two stand out. The priest of magic which today is associated with black magic was called garabonciás in Hungarian. At times he was a student in some "college" and studied his black arts there. Yet this association was probably more from European influence since the term comes from the east from the term Karapan or Karaban. (note Kara=black in Turkic) Originally he wasn’t just the practitioner of black magic but dealt with magic related to controlling the weather and in predicting the future. References to such priests in the Inquisition trials of men famous for this art often denied making weather changes and just admitted to making predictions. That is they were good at reading the natural signs which indicated weather changes. Even in modern times there are many old Hungarian farmers who have an uncanny ability to predict the weather based on the behavior of animals and sky patterns, which the average man seems totally oblivious to and finds incomprehensible. They use the flight of birds, wind and everything in nature to predict weather and are very accurate.

There were many exceptional men and women priests of the old religion who were using healing methods which to the western "medicus" seemed to be irrational, but today are well known and sound diagnostic methods. Some of the women practitioners of magic, were called by the more common VARAZS expression which today means to make magic, or to enchant. Another archaic variant of the word is RAZS-di meaning female magician in ancient times. This comes from Mesopotamian BARUS, and is found in an early Hungarian document as "Egy barum Ilu Nazir" who was an army chaplain of sorts.

The term was also found in a Turfan Buddhist works and meant a female magician. Similarly in Sanskrit
R-S-D-I means female magician. I mention it here because in early Hungarian history there was an uprising against the western dominated church of Christian Hungary by the representatives of the old religion and a certain RASDI was captured and tortured by them. She ended up chewing off her hand as she was left to starve in her dungeon.

Another term for witch, in Hungarian is Boszorkány, Boszorka which may be related to a similar Greek term for behex, but may also have an earlier and totally different origins. In early Sumerian from Mesopotamia, the term BUZUR meant secret knowledge and was related to the term for trust also. The so called witches are certainly associated with secret knowledge that allows them to do magic. Like Sumerian in Hungarian the term BIZ also meant trust, which is but a variant of the word for faith/religion. The witch just represents the occult knowledge often associated with the old religions that became persecuted under the term heretics, or labeled pagan, which meant in the old days anything that was old and no longer accepted. It definitely didn’t mean godless as it does today. They did seem to posses a lot of knowledge which other Europeans feared and wrongly equated with the works of the devil.

The Hungarian term "Táltos" is a good example of this, as it came to be equated with special knowledge, and today means a shaman. Yet the word is based on the word to "know" which is TUD and is found in other Finno-Ugrian languages to mean knowledge, wisdom and in rare cases this is the knowledge typically characterized by the shaman or priests of old. Similarly in Sumerian of Mesopotamia the wisdom and knowledge is called TAL-TAL. In Hungarian the term for scientist still uses the term as TUD-OS. ( D<>L, -OS is the suffix for profession or a trade). A strange variant of the term Táltos in Hungarian folklore uses the horse of the shaman which also posseses special knowledge and the ability to talk and fly. This old shamanistic concept is ultimately Scythian in origin because they are recorded to believe in using horses to prophesize. This was also an Iranian custom of ancient origin.Therefore the special "knowledge" of the horse was transferred over to the Hungarian as a "táltos" horse, which has extraordinary abilities.

For a very long time many researchers have tried to prove that the earlier religion of the Hungarians was shamanism, before they were converted to European Christianity (Catholitism). Yet they came from an area of the world which already was quite familiar with an earlier Christianity than the European one, thought by the disciples of Jesus. There is no doubt that Shamanism did have precedence in time, and that it survived in a lesser degree as various titles of doctors and healers, but the new religion of the Hungarians before they even settled in Hungary was mainly Christianity. This was also the final conclusion of the great dean of archeologists in Hungary, László Gyula, who toward the end of his career published a short little essay indicating his doubts about this much cherished idea that the Hungarians of the time of their settlement were Shamanistic. However all the new alliances which came with the Hungarians did have their own religious traditions and weren't all Christians. (Cumans, Yazig, Khazars, Iranians, Jews, Muslims) The Christian documents from the 11, 12, 13, 14^th centuries dealing with Hungarian inquisitions dealt more often than not with heretics, people of other Christian denominations, which came often from the east and which had dogmas which were rejected by the western Catholic Christian church. Hungarians of the times also frequented the great Arab schools of the Near East and even published Muslim books in their country until they were shut down by the inquisitors.

There were Manicheans and their special subbranches like the Bogomils and the Cuman variant called the "Cucurbitas". There were Eastern rite Christians from the Caucasus as well as many Hungarians who adopted the Greek Orthodox faith. There were also Muslims and Jews. There were even remnants of the Magian religion of the east whose titles like Magocs are often misrepresented as shamanists by today's half baked experts, rather than the obvious link to Magus. One of the misleading shamanistic traits of the old sun worshipers was that on special ceremonies, like the blessing of the hawks on Christmas day, the priest sometimes dressed in a cape of feathers chanted to the drums and so on. Even some Christian priests saw no harm in performing this ceremony so they couldn’t have had a strong anti-Christian flavor to them any longer. The magi or manichean priests, however were infinitely more educated and knowledgeable of medicine than many primitive shamans are today. They had their books, written in the special Hungarian runic script of eastern origin. Books which were confiscated over time from them and taken to Italy by the inquisitors, never to be seen again even though nothing evil was ever proven to be in them. Finally the Hungarian king Coloman "the book lover" said enough, and declared that there are no such thing as witches.