The Isépy family of Magyarizsép (in Latin gens de [Magyar-]Isép; in German von Isép) is one of the oldest surviving noble families in Hungary. Their ancestral seat was the village of Magyarizsép (since the Treaty of Trianon, Czehoslovakia and from 1993 Slovakia; Slovak: Nižný Žipov).
Name The name appears in different forms: Izsépy, Isipi, Isepi. The official version ‘Isépy’ is the archaic form of the phonetically correct ‘Izsépy’.M. Kázmér, Régi magyar családnevek szótára, XIV-XVII. század, Budapest 1993, s. v. Izsépi, p. 505. Etymologically, the name is traced back to the Greek Εὐσέβειος or the Latin form Eusebius, which entered Hungarian as Özséb,A. Isépy, The Chronicle of the Isépy Family from their ancient origins to the 20th Century, Budapest 1948, p. 25. or to the name Josef (József).M. Kázmér, Régi magyar családnevek szótára, XIV-XVII. század, Budapest 1993, s. v. Izsep, 505.
History The Isépy of MagyarizsépThis is the official family name that appears in the final nobility register of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1938: J. Gerő, A magyar kir. belügyminiszter által igazolt nemesek 1867-1937, Budapest 1938, 169. descend from the Bogát-Radvány genus, which split into six families in the mid-13th century, along with the Cseleji, Monoky and Rákóczi.J. Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a XIV. század közepéig, Budapest 1900, 248ff.; G. v. Csergheő / I. Nagy, Der Adel von Ungarn sammt den Nebenländern der St. Stephanskrone, Bd.1, Nürnberg 1893 (= J. Siebmachers grosses und allgemeines Wappenbuch IV.15), 260. Except for the one branch of the Isépy, to which the members of the family living today can be traced back, all the others died out sooner or later.J. Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a XIV. század közepéig, Budapest 1900, S. 256-57. The ancestor of this branch was Sztáncs of Isép (early 13th century), whose name can be found in today's Isztáncs (Slovak: Stanča).A. Isépy, The Chronicle of the Isépy Family from their ancient origins to the 20th Century, Budapest 1948, 33.
Members of the family bear the noble and administrative title of comes (latin “count”), i.e. hungarian ispán, in documents from the 13th and 14th centuries. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Isépy owned 42 villages in the county of Zemplén and Sáros.See E. Reiszig, Zemplén vármegye nemes családjai, in: Zemplén vármegye és Sátoraljaújhely r. t. város, (= S. BOROVSZKY [ed.], Magyarország vármegyéi és városai – Magyarország mongráfiája, vol. 21), Budapest 1905, 516–545, 531. Within a few decades in the second half of the 15th century, the Isépy family lost most of their land.A. Isépy, The Chronicle of the Isépy Family from their ancient origins to the 20th Century, Budapest 1948, 47-52.
The history of the Isépy family is well documented in the following centuries, but members of the family played hardly any role in public life until the 19th century. Until the beginning of the 20th century and partly until the Beneš decrees, the Isépy family owned land in Magyarizsép, Barancs, Humenné, Snina, Éralja, Oroszsebes, Kistoronya, Céké and Trebišov, among other places.A. Isépy, The Chronicle of the Isépy Family from their ancient origins to the 20th Century, Budapest 1948.
Coat of arms A red-clad horseman with a blue shield on a white horse, his right hand holding a drawn sword and his left a severed head.Archive of Borsod–Abaúj–Zemplén county, #1782.pr.Pol.87.pag.207.108 and J. Csoma, Magyar Nemzetségi czímerek, Budapest 1904, 47.
People
Dr. Tamás Isépy (1924–2004), Hungarian politician. In 2011, the ‘Isépy Tamás Library’ was established at the Németh László Highschool in Hódmezővásárhely from his private collection of 13,099 volumes.https://nlghmv.hu/node/425 (05/06/2025). Dr. István Isépy (1942–2022), Hungarian biologist, director of the Botanical Garden of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest (1982–2005).
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