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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Hungarian : from the common Hungarian family name Nagy, with the addition of the letter g- representing the first character of someone’s initials, their place of origin, or a nickname. This method of altering the most frequent surnames such as Kis ‘small’ (see Kiss), Nagy ‘big’, Kovács ‘smith’ (see Kovacs), or Szabo ‘tailor’ is a peculiar feature of Hungarian naming.
  • Possibly an altered spelling of Swiss German Gnägi (see Gnagey 1).

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