The Universe of Discourse

Who is the namesake of the old Hungarian name for the month of June?

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One oddity about the old-style Hungarian month names that I do not have time to investigate is that the old name of June was Szent Iván hava, Saint Ivan's month, or possibly Saint John's month. “John” in Hungarian is not Iván, it is Ján or János, at least at present. Would a Hungarian understand Szent Iván as a recognizably foreign name? I wonder which saint this is actually?

There is a Saint Ivan of Rila, but he is Bulgarian, so that could be a coincidence. Hungarian Wikipedia strangely does not seem to have an article about the most likely candidate, St. John the Evangelist, so I could not check if that John is known there as Ján or Iván or something else.

It does have an article about John the Baptist, who in Hungarian called Keresztelő János, not Iván. But that article links to the page about St. John the Baptist's Eve, which is titled Szent Iván éjszakája.

Further complicating the whole matter of Szent Iván hava is the issue that there have always been many Slavs in Hungary. The original birth record page is marked “KULA, HUNGARY”, which if correct puts it in what is now called Kula, Serbia — Hungary used to be bigger than it is now. Still why would the name of the month be in Slavic and not Magyar?

Do any of my Gentle Readers understand what is going on here?

[ Addendum: The English Wikipedia page for the Bulgarian Saint Ivan of Rila gives the Bulgarian-language version of his name. It's not written as Иван (“Ivan”) but as Йоан (“John”). The Bulgarian Wikipedia article about him is titled Иван Рилски (“Ivan Rilski”) but in the first line and the header of the infobox, his name is given instead as Йоан. I do not understand the degree to which John and Ivan are or are not interchangeable in this context. ]

[ Addendum 20211018: Michael Lugo points out that it is unlikely to be Ivan of Rila, whose feast day is in October. M. Lugo is right. This also argues strongly against the namesake of Szent Iván hava being John the Evangelist, as his feast is in December. The feast of John the Baptist is in June, so the Szent Iván of Szent Iván hava is probably John the Baptist, same as in Szent Iván éjszakája. I would still like to know why it is Szent Iván and not Szent János though. ]

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