Hungary bears no resemblance to any mainstream European country; it's like an orphan in Europe.

If you closely examine modern Europe, although there are dozens of countries of varying sizes on the continent, most of them have some degree of connection with each other.

For instance, Spanish and Portuguese share many similarities, and German, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are quite closely related. English also has many similarities with German.

However, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in Central Europe, there is a different country—Hungary.

They speak a different language, have different customs, and bear no resemblance to any mainstream European country, like an orphan in Europe, with no relatives in sight.

How did this country become so different?

Calling Hungary a "European orphan" is because Hungarian culture does indeed seem out of place in Europe, with no closely connected country to compare with.

For example, in terms of name order, in most Western cultures, the given name comes before the surname, but in Hungary, it's like East Asian cultures, where the surname comes first.

Linguistically, Hungary stands out even more.

While most European languages, including English, German, French, and Spanish, belong to the Indo-European language family, Hungarian is one of the few exceptions.

From a linguistic perspective, Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language family, with only a few related languages like Finnish and Estonian.

These languages not only geographically lie on the outskirts of Europe but also share limited similarities with Hungarian, confined to being part of the same language family, with no mutual intelligibility or similar vocabulary.

Apart from names and language, Hungary's ethnic culture is more diverse due to the mixing of various ethnicities, compared to other more ethnically homogeneous European countries.

But the fundamental reason Hungary is so different lies in the essential differences between the Hungarian people and other European ethnicities.

Compared to the three major mainstream ethnicities spread across Europe—Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic—the ethnic groups living in the Hungarian region have a much shorter history in Europe and different ethnic origins.

During the Roman era, much of modern Hungary belonged to the province of Pannonia, an important frontier of the Roman Empire, with numerous Roman military units stationed to guard against barbarian invasions.

However, as the Roman Empire declined in the late 4th century, the defenses of Pannonia weakened, and numerous barbarian tribes entered the region.

In desperation, the Roman Emperor granted settlement rights within the Roman Empire to these tribes, while nominally, Pannonia remained part of the Roman Empire.

At the end of the 4th century, a nomadic tribe from Central Asia—the Huns—entered Europe.

Considered to be a mix of Hunnic and Central Asian nomadic peoples, the Huns crossed the Ural Mountains, rested briefly in the Caucasus, and continued westward, completely destroying the defenses of Pannonia in 433 AD, expelling all Roman troops from the region, and establishing a vast nomadic empire here.

Due to the lack of effective political organization among nomadic tribes, which were divided into many different tribes, their unity was largely based on the worship of a heroic figure.

After a brief period of prosperity, the Hunnic Empire, along with Pannonia, quickly descended into chaos and disintegration.

Perhaps the plains of Pannonia were too attractive. After the Avars were defeated, shortly after, the true masters of Hungary migrated here.

In the late 9th century, the Magyars, originally living around the Dnieper River in Russia, were oppressed by the Turks and forced to migrate westward.

In 896, under the leadership of their chief Árpád, they arrived in Pannonia and used it as a base to plunder various parts of Western Europe.

And these Magyars, the ancestors of modern Hungarians, still call themselves Magyars today.

Árpád, who led the Magyars to Pannonia, had already taken a portion of power from the tribal chiefs as the leader of the tribal alliance. He also established an early feudal administrative system.

In 907 AD, Árpád died, and his son Zoltán inherited his position, continuing to lead the Magyars in plundering Germania and the Byzantine region, even embarking on a campaign to Francia, completing a large-scale raid around the Alps.

Until 955 AD, when the Magyars were defeated by Emperor Otto I of Germany in the Battle of Lechfeld in southern Germany, they stopped large-scale plundering of Western Europe.

Thanks to the early feudal system established by Árpád, the Magyars did not collapse after this major defeat, but suffered heavy losses.

Many tribes broke away from the control of the tribal alliance leader, and the leaders could only control their own tribes.

After the Magyars arrived in Hungary, they inevitably came into contact with Christianity during exchanges with other ethnic groups in Europe. Many people, even nobles, accepted Christianity as their faith, including István I, who succeeded as the leader of the alliance in 997.

On Christmas Day in 1000 AD, under the auspices of the Pope, István I was crowned King of Hungary, establishing the Kingdom of Hungary.

In order to eliminate the estrangement between different tribes

, the king abolished the original method of dividing the people according to clans, and redivided several administrative regions directly under the king within the kingdom.

In addition, István I forcibly promoted a settled agricultural lifestyle and the Catholic faith.

Under the somewhat compulsory policy of István I, the Magyars transformed from nomads to farmers, from pagans to Christians, and completed the transition from nomadic tribes to feudal kingdoms.

For a thousand years, the Magyars have never left this land, and their nation has been closely linked with Hungary ever since.