Toth

The origin of the surname Toth

Tóth historically denoted a Slovak or, more broadly, a Slav.

What kind of surname is Toth?

As a toponymic (locational) surname, the surname Toth originally described where its bearer lived or came from — a village, region, landscape feature or landmark. When people moved from one place to another, neighbours often identified the newcomer by their place of origin, and that association became a lasting family name. Some toponymic surnames name a specific town or county; others describe the local terrain, such as a hill, wood, field, ford or bridge beside which a family lived. These names are a kind of map of migration and settlement, recording where earlier generations put down roots.

How Hungarian surnames work

Hungarian, like the East Asian languages, places the family name first. Hungarian surnames are strongly occupational and descriptive — Kovács (“smith”), Szabó (“tailor”) and Nagy (“big”) are among the most common — and many indicate ancestry or ethnicity, such as Horváth (“Croatian”) or Németh (“German”), or the place a family came from.

Variants & spellings

• Tóth