Györffy was born in Szucság, Hungary the son of ethnographer István Györffy and Anna Papp. He finished his secondary schooling in the St. István Grammar School in 1935. Between 1935 and 1939 he studied at the Peter Pázmány University under the historian Sándor Domanovszky, Elemér Mályusz, and the linguist and turkologistGyula Németh. Towards the end of this time he took a sabbatical around the Baltic Sea, Finland and Lapland. When he received the news of the start of World War II he returned to Hungary, arriving back in October 1939. In June 1940, he was awarded a Doctorate in Hungarian Cultural History with his thesis "Besenyők és magyarok". From September 1940 until the end of 1941 he worked in the university library as a trainee. From 1942 he was a trainee in the Department of Historical Research within the Pál Teleki Scientific Institute, where he later became a lecturer. From 1945 to 1949 he was the Head of the Department of Ethnology at the Institute. At the end of 1951 he received an offer for the position of Senior Lecturer at the University of Debrecen but he refused it because of the serious political situation in Hungary at that time. At the Department of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences he became a Fellow, a Senior Fellow and then a Consulting Fellow. In 1987 he started using a computer to ease editing his work. He used it to process details of Pozsony, but this work was left unfinished. In 1988 he retired and became a Fellow Emeritus.
1997 - His work became a part of the Magyar Örökség.
Work
Györffy's work concentrates on Hungarian history, such as the Great Migration from the Far East into Hungary, the Árpád Dynasty, the exploration of the Far East, topography, and ancient given names and settlement names. He excelled in linguistics and was a Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He contributed to the Academy's learned journalMagyar Nyelv. In 1957 he introduced ideas that would later make up his masterpiece Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza.. In this work he recorded regional geographical names, settlement names, names of areas and borders, rivers, hills, forests and so on, and a great number of given names. He recorded the names in the original spelling. He recorded the names of trees in the border regions and other features of the landscape. His work is important in Hungarian linguistic studies.
Selection of notable works on linguistics
Tanulmányok a magyar állam eredetéről. A nemzetségtől a vármegyéig, a törzstől az országig. Kurszán és Kurszán vára. Budapest, 1959.
Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza. I-IV. Budapest, 1963-1998.
Napkelet felfedezése. Julianus, Plano Carpini és Rubruk útijelentései. Budapest, 1965.
A magyarok elődeiről és a honfoglalásról. Kortársak és krónikások híradásai. 2nd edition, enlarged. Budapest, 1975.
Julianus barát és Napkelet fölfedezése. Budapest, 1986.
Anonymus. Rejtély avagy történeti forrás? Selected studies. Budapest, 1988.
A magyarság keleti elemei. Budapest, 1990.
Krónikáink és a magyar őstörténet. Régi kérdések - új válaszok. Budapest, 1993.
Pest-Buda kialakulása. Budapest története a honfoglalástól az Árpád-kor végi székvárossá emelkedéséig. Budapest, 1997.
István király és műve. 3rd edition, enlarged and revised. Budapest, 2000.
