Kertész

Kertész is a Hungarian surname meaning gardener. It is derived from kert, meaning "garden," with the agent suffix -ész, which denotes "one who tends." The diacritic on the é is customary in Hungarian; in non-Hungarian contexts the name is often rendered as Kertesz.

Notable people with the surname include Imre Kertész (1929–2016), a Hungarian author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 for Fatelessness; André Kertész (1894–1985), a Hungarian-born photographer whose work helped shape modern photojournalism; and István Kertész, a Hungarian conductor with an international career. The surname is widely associated with Hungarian culture and appears among the diaspora in North America and Europe.