The Foreigner's Guide to Slovakia

• What are the most obvious and famous physical land marks?
• How is the population dispersed?
• Where do most people live?
• How is the east different from the west? North and south? – geographically – culturally
• Are there regional characteristics?
  
  

Often there is confusion between perceived cultural areas and the actual physical borders of regions of the county. Even this still confuses me. For example, it’s common to hear a Slovak say, “I’m from Orava” or “I’m going home to Orava this weekend.” There is the cultural region of Orava in the north but there is no physical administrative region to correspond. The name comes from the historic regional name from when Slovakia was part of Hungary. In other words, it’s an area but not an exact physical locale, or at least that’s how I would explain it.

So let’s start with what are the official administrative regions of modern-day Slovakia.

In the most basic terms, Slovakia is divided into 4 areas:

In these areas there are 8 regions (in Slovak a region is called kraj).

In these 8 regions, there are 79 districts. To see a list of these, along with the size in area and population, see Slovakiasite.

Going back to historical names, I found a fascinating site called Statoids, which deals with the administrative divisions in countries past and present. There the names of the former Hungarian counties are listed that were incorporated or partially incorporated into Slovak (Czechoslovakia) after 1918. These county names existed until 1922.

For those who are doing searches for their Slovak ancestors, these names cause a lot of confusion. If growing up you had heard stories of your grandma who was from Zemplin, you might go look at a modern map of Slovakia and be confounded that you can’t find any sign of it.

Another problem someone might have with these historic names and searching for ancestors is that these place names were often recorded in American records by their Hungarian equivalent or in the German equivalent. Here’s a list of the old regional names in Slovak and their Hungarian equivalents:

Additionally, there are also other regions in Slovakia that don’t correspond to historical counties:

• Kysuce – northern part of the former Trenčín county
• Záhorie – western part of the former Nitra and Bratislava county
• Podpoľanie – southern part of the former Zvolen county
• Zamagurie – northern part of the former Spiš county

Even the most basic orientation takes time. Information is gleaned by bits and pieces and after a while a clearer picture begins to emerge. Just as in the US we have regions such as “the mid-west”, “the south”, “the Appalachians”, Slovakia has regions with their own unique characteristics.

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