Sonta ( sr-cyr, Сонта) is a village located in the municipality of Apatin, West Bačka District, Vojvodina, Serbia. The village has a Croat ethnic majority and its population numbering 4,238 people (2011 census).

Name

According to some sources, inhabitants of Sonta originating from

Herzegovina Herzegovina ( or ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, Hercegovina, separator=" / ", Херцеговина, ) is the southern and smaller of two main geographical region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Bosnia. It has never had strictly defined geogra ...

and they came to this village under the leadership of Sonda Vidaković, thus the name of Sonta derived from the name of this person. In Serbian Cyrillic the village is known as Сонта, in Croatian as ''Sonta'', in Hungarian as ''Szond'', and in German as ''Waldau''.

History

It was first mentioned in the 12th century under name ''Zund''. In Ottoman records, Sonta was mentioned as a settlement with 36 families, while in 1898, its population numbered 4,972 inhabitants and 650 houses. During the 1920s, the village was moved 3 km to the north from its original location because of the large floods of the river Danube. On the session of the Municipality of Apatin in June 2006,

Croatian language Croatian (; ' ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and other neighboring countries. It is the official ...

gain the status of the official language in Sonta. Until then, Serbian language was the sole official language in this village,Zvonik br. 141
Hrvatski u službenoj uporabi u Sonti, July 2006 although Croats comprised majority in the village since the country of

Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro ( sr, Cрбија и Црна Гора, translit=Srbija i Crna Gora) was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yu ...

was established.

Culture

*Grožđe bal, Annual grape festival

Demographics

;Ethnic groups (2002 census) * Croats = 2,966 (59.42%) * Serbs = 975 (19.53%) * Hungarians = 267 (5.35%) * Romanians = 211 (4.23%) *

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

= 138 (2.76%) *others. ;Historical population *1961: 6,821 *1971: 6,508 *1981: 6,313 *1991: 5,990 *2002: 4,992 *2011: 4,238

References

* Slobodan Ćurčić, Broj stanovnika Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 1996.

External links