Family name origins & meanings
- Croatian (northern and eastern Croatia) : ethnic name for a Croat (see Horvath). In particular, this term was used to denote Croatian refugees from the Ottoman Empire who settled in the eastern and northern parts of Croatia. When Hungarian officials could not spell the Slavic name of such refugees, they would simply write them down as Horvat(h) ‘Croatian’. Horvat is now the most frequent surname in Croatia.
- Slovenian : nickname for someone from Croatia, in particular a refugee from the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, from an old spelling of Hrvat, ethnic name for a Croat. The surname Horvat, together with its variant Hrovat, is the second most frequent surname in Slovenia.
- Hungarian (Horvát) and Jewish (from Hungary) : ethnic name for a Croat (see Horvath).