D'Orbigny, in 1846, received a collection of material made by Chevalier von Hauer from the Tertiary of the Vienna Basin with the request that he studies the foraminifera. D'Orbigny studied this material in Paris, kept a part of it, and returned the rest to von Hauer, who may have further sorted it into vials of his choosing. Some of the material was also redistributed to other museums and topotypes were also newly collected. Thus the status of four collections of foraminifera from the Vienna Basin are confused. These collections are located in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, the Geologische Bundesanstalt, Vienna, the Roemer Museum, Hildesheim (Germany), and in the Cushman Collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. The research undertaken for the present work shows that the only collection containing valid syntypes of d'Orbigny's material is in Paris; the remainder are topotype collections. In the revision of the Austrian collection by Papp & Schmid (1985), the specimens referred to Dentalina spinosa d'Orbigny 1846 and Nonionina boueana d'Orbigny, 1846, were misidentified. A close examination of the syntypes housed in the French collection allows clarification of their taxonomical assignment and to designate lectotypes of these two species. Moreover, a comparative study led to reexamine the specimens of Dentalina elegantissima d'Orbigny, 1846, for which a lectotype is also designated, as well as specimens of Nonion commune (d'Orbigny, 1846) held in the same collection, and topotypes of Nonion fabum (Fichtel & Moll, 1798).