User:SvareJM/Sandbox/Iceland Personal Names

Online Resources

 * Nordic Names A website studying given names in the Nordic countries.

Introduction
Considerable confusion exists among many people with Icelandic ancestry regarding how names are used in Iceland and how they should be recorded. This document attempts to give background into the historical practices, legislation, and recommended best practices for recording Icelandic personal and place names.

Iceland is the only Nordic country that continues the use of patronymics. Icelanders are recognized by their given names. The modern Icelandic telephone directory, for example, lists people alphabetically by their given name. People in Iceland with a fixed surname constitute a small minority of the population. Most of these are from when Icelanders were living abroad, usually Denmark, which had rule over Iceland from 1380 until 1943.

There are laws governing the naming of babies and changes of names. An Icelandic Naming Committee (Mannanafnanefnd) maintains a list of names accepted and rejected. According to Article 5 of the Personal Names Act, given names not already on the official approved list must be first approved by the committee. The name approval is contingent on how easily the name can be incorporated into Icelandic, if it will cause embarrassment to the bearer, and how compatible it is with Icelandic tradition. Also, a name must only contain letters found in the Icelandic alphabet, have grammatical gender and change its form according to the case system.

Things To Know

 * Iceland uses patronymic surnames which are derived from the genetive form of the father's given name and a suffix to identify the child's gender, -son (son) or -dóttir (daughter)
 * Surnames were frequently abbreviated in records
 * The suffix -dóttir is frequently abbreviated as d., dr., dtr.
 * The suffix -son is frequently abbreviated as s or ss

Best Practices For Recording Names

 * Surnames which are abbreviated in the records should be recorded fully spelled out
 * Farm names indicate residence, and should be recorded as part of the event locality - not as a surname

Laws on Personal Names
In 2019 a law was passed allowing persons that register their gender as neutral to use bur, a poetic word for "son" to be repurposed as a neuter noun, as a suffix instead of -son or -dóttir.

Naming Patterns
A specific naming pattern was very common in Finland and in other parts of Europe until about 1900. Although not always followed strictly, the following pattern may be helpful in researching family groups and determining the parents of the mother and father: • 2

If the wife's parents were deceased, or the couple were living on the wife's parents farm, her parents may have priority in the naming. Also, if a man's wife passed away, and he remarried, the first daughter may be named after the deceased wife.

Children in the Family With the Same Name
Sometimes two or more children within a family were given the same name. In some cases it was done because an older child died and the next child of the same gender was given the name. However, two or more children by the same given name could also have lived to adulthood. Do not presume that the first child with that same given name died unless the actual death record is found.

Surnames
It is clear from the oldest known records that names have been used to identify individuals throughout history. Surnames, as they are understood by many English-speaking cultures today, first began to be used before the end of the first millennium, C.E. Surnames were first introduced in Europe by the Normans, who were French-speaking descendants of Viking settlers. This may indicate that people living in Scandinavia were among the earliest adopters of some type of surname.

As the population increased, it became necessary to distinguish between individuals with the same name. The problem was usually solved by adding descriptive information such as who a person’s father was, residence, occupation, or characteristic. Now, Hans could be known as Hans the son of Jon (Jonsson), Hans of Nordgaard farm, or Vesle (young) Hans.

Patronymics
The predominant type of surname in Iceland is patronymic. Such names are based on the father's given name. This surname changed with each generation. For example, Jon Arnesson was the son of a man named Arne. If Jon had a son named Arne, the son would be known as Arne Jonsson (Arne son of Jon) and his brothers would be surnamed Jonsson, while his sisters would be known as Jonsdóttir (daughter of Jon). In some of the earliest church records a person may be recorded with a matronymic surname, based on the person's mother's given name. In these case it indicates the child was illegitimate, while contemporary use is a matter of personal preference.

Abbreviations
When recording surnames, it is important to remember that patronymics were frequently abbreviated in the records. The abbreviations dr., dtr., d., are all substitutes for dóttir. Likewise, male patronymics are frequently shortened to s. In a parish where most of the population has a surname ending with dóttir or son, recording the name in full would be needlessly redundant.