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Strange Hungarian habits
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Every country is unique in its own way. In different places, different customs have developed over the centuries. As the Hungarian saying goes, “as many houses, so many customs.” Some customs are natural to Hungarians, but foreigners might find them weird.
Loud nose blowing
If asked, most foreigners would pick this as the strangest Hungarian habit, writes magyarorszagom.hu. Blowing your nose loudly in public is a bizarre and baffling Hungarian habit. There are many countries where it is not customary to use a handkerchief in public, especially not for blowing your nose loudly. In Hungary, however, there are no such restrictions. It is just that if you are in a company, turn away while sneezing or blowing your nose.
Name day, wrong order
In Hungarian, we write people’s surnames first, followed by their first names. For example, the Prime Minister of Hungary is Orbán Viktor, not Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian language. This is not the only interesting thing about Hungarian names. Apart from birthdays we also celebrate name days. Each date has one or more first names, when the person with that name celebrates their name day. Gift-giving is less common, but having a cake is a must on name days.
We have many dishes that are very unusual for foreigners. One such dish is a popular main course called főzelék, which is a thick vegetable stew. Fruit soup is equally rare – both statements are entirely untrue. Főzelék is known as Pottage and is cooked in many countries. Fruit soup, as I have repeatedly said is Scandinavian in origin, not Hungarian and widely consumed there: pollution of Scandinavia, just over 21 million, population of Hungary around 9.75 million. The we have the popularity of Avocado soup worldwide, a soup that originated in Mexico. Or the Chinese Pear soup (population of China about 1.4 billion) and sold in Chinese restaurants around the world. Need I go on?
Name order – the use of the surname first and then the first name is known as the Eastern order because it has been used in place such as China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam since time immemorial, long before the Magyars migrated to Central Europe. Not Hungarian and not strange to foreigners at all.