The History of the Last Name Bús

During a revolution in Budapest, Hungary, a large capital city of once a communist, Soviet ran European country, a young boy was born. About the age of four or five years old, his mother, and his father were forced to flee their homeland into a neighboring country just so they could fly out of Europe into the United States. Their process of moving into a foreign country seemed to be a struggle, especially when they arrived. They brought with them very few items they needed for survival, including their names.

This move was not well planned out due to the circumstances which provoked it. The boy’s father was a bus driver who had been caught red-handed by the Soviets for storing and smuggling weapons into the country underneath the floorboards of his bus for the Americans. If the family would have chosen to continue living in communist Hungary the father would most likely have been executed. This was their time to flee the country.

This move proved not to be an ordinary move, but a very strange one. The family had paid someone to smuggle them safely across the Hungarian border into a neighboring country, which happened to be at night, and fly them to the United States. They had previously told this person they would like to fly to Washington to live, thinking it was the capital city of the United States, since they lived in the capital city of Hungary. They were soon to realize the plane they were on was landing in Seattle, Washington, not Washington, D.C., the place where they had hoped to go. They did not realize there was also a Washington State. In all, this move had proven to have a very large communication error which landed them in a different city across the nation by accident, but luckily they liked the city of Seattle so much they did not want to move.

Now that the family was in the United States, English was the common language. This made them feel even more like foreigners, especially with the last name of Bús (pronounced Boosh). Many Americans would mispronounce their last name and call them Mr. and Mrs. Bus. This made them feel uncomfortable because in Hungarian bus essentially means the “f word,” so this led them to change their last name by adding the letter “h” to the end of it so it would look like Bush. This not only kept people from mispronouncing their last name, but also allowed them to feel apart of the American culture by having an American name. Years later, they were to drop the letter “h” from their last name and kept their original name of Bús because they thought it would be best having a unique name. To sum up, these people found out having such a unique last name was best even though it was not American-like.

With this young boy being my father, he vaguely remembers living in Budapest, Hungary and fleeing into one of its neighboring countries due to him being so young. During the difficult times of fleeing Hungary, my grandparents and my father seemed to have struggled with the move because they were leaving family behind and were moving half way around the world to a location which was foreign to them. During all the struggles they endured, they seemed to know it was best to leave family behind and move to the United States. Talking to my grandparents about four years ago, while they were still alive, they stated that coming to the United States was the best decision they have ever made.