what’s in a name?
I’ve awoken far too early for any worthwhile activity and the following inner dialogue is set in motion: Shall I attend to ” … my melancholy whores” or blog? Blog. It’ll require less attention to a master of word’s words.
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My interest in and passion for names, what they mean in reality and to the bearer, where they originate etc, is something that is going to remain highly activated for as long as I live. I think.
The country inwhich I was born and where I am currently forced to live still favours and legally demands the patronymic way of naming, with a few exceptions. This makes it really easy to see whose child you are as at the end of your name you stick your father’s first name and add -son or -daughter to it. And over the last few years, using either just the mother’s name or both father and mother’s names has become ever so popular, making names rather long but very meaningful and easy genealogically speaking (mine would be Steinunn Björk Rafnhildar- og Björnsdóttir … tooooo long, so just shown as an example). (Random related info: in Iceland, to be correct you should say: “My name is Steinunn and I am Björnsdóttir”, as you are not called your patronym thingy, but you are it, someone’s child, get it?) Furthermore, not long ago foreigners who got Icelandic citizenship had to change their names to Icelandic ones in order to become fully fledged icicles, and choosing a new name and perhaps using it is clearly not always easy or fun. This law has now been changed a while back, but one famous case of when a new citizen tried to resist the government’s request for him to pick a new name ended, after a lot of arguing and trouble from both sides, in him choosing two names: Eilífur Friður, meaning Eternal Peace. He’d had enough and decided to call a truce with his peace declaration in a name. Cool guy, eh? :)
Surnames also exist here. When Danes ruled Iceland (1380 to 1918) some snobs figured they’d get more power and influence by altering their Icelandic last names to suit the surname tradition which had evolved in Denmark and the rest of Europe. Someone “called” Þorsteinsson became Thorstenson or Thorstensen, Þórarinsson became Thorarensen, Matthíasson became Mathiesen, Gíslason turned into Geslison, and many picked names of places they’d been born & raised as surnames, altering them slightly by losing the Icelandic letters to better suit the Danish language … I can’t think of other examples but I have to say that it always amazes me that families of the above snobs would continue til this day using the surnames they picked so they’d be able to hobnob with the unpopular men of a harsh king. The same naming changes happened when people started migrating abroad to the US mainly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
When surnames became popular among the higher class (I feel like I am writing a high school paper!) so did the foreign tradition of wives dropping their patronyms and adopting their husbands surnames. I don’t know of a culture where men take their wives names, though I will find out if it’s out there!, and I do believe that Danes are somewhat into using both parents’ last names for their kids, and also couples both hyphenating their last names so they actually end up the same. I am not sure though.
When I taught Icelandic to foreigners (loved that job!) I got to know a gazillion new Icelanders or immgrants whose plans varied from spending a summer working in fish factories to deciding on settling here for good, for whatever reasons. Many married foreigners had naming issues that started to bother me.
Say you’re an Icelandic man called Jón Pálsson. Can you guess what Jón’s dad’s name was? Yes, it was Páll. So Jón marries Esmeralda Mirella from Costa Rica. She signs up for her Icelandic course, including proudly her new social security number/national insurance number (her date of birth plus year hyphen 3 random numbers plus a digit symbolising her birth decade :) ) – and then her name: Esmeralda M. Pálsson. By moving to Iceland and marrying Jón, not only has she made an exciting life altering change, but she’s become the son of her husband’s father. This really annoys me. As did the following:
In 2004, when I taught my last Icelandic class at Námsflokkar Reykjavíkur, I met a lady from the Philippines who proudly announced that she was the first foreign woman married to an Icelander who had made a logical change to her last name. The last-name change itself was something she wanted to do because it fit her Philippino sensibilities, and this, I guess, is how most women who are brought up in similar male-surname dominant cultures feel. But what did this woman do? Let me use the same names as above: this time a proud new Icelander signed up for classes as Esmeralda M. Pálsdóttir. Dóttir = daughter. Why? Because she’s a woman, silly! She ain’t nobody’s son! But she now is Pál’s daughter, and Páll is Jón’s father, and Jón is her husband, so, in name, we’ve got a sibling marriage. Brother and sister sitting in a tree, k i s s i n g. Stupid.
I know several men who’ve married foreign women who have chosen to drop their last names and add their husband’s last names, thereby adding to their husband’s father’s pool of sons, and then they’ve popped out a few children of their own, all of which have become their grandfather’s sons, girls and boys alike. Eek, it sounds so horrible to me. I simply don’t get it. I mean, I do, I understand, if it’s their tradition for the whole fam. to have the same name, but as I understand what “Pálsson” and “Pálsdóttir” actually means, it just irritates me.
I myself have issues with my last names. I was born Steinunn Björk Björnsdóttir. I don’t know my biological father and 
as I didn’t want to be his daughter in this obvous fashion I changed from Björnsdóttir to Pieper when I was 11. I chose his last name bc it’s his mother’s last name, too, and her I knew and loved; also bc my older sis has a fancypants surname and I copied her as much as I could :) I always run into trouble with that Pieper name, though. It’s not really that nice, I have to spell it all the time, when asked “… and whose daughter are you?”, which is how we ask people for their last names here, I have to say “not daughter, just Pieper” and then spell it which is hard to do as the vowels sound similar, or I if I say “Pieper” they write down Piepersdóttir, which is really silly!
After my time at BYU, USA I decided to become more Icelandic again and picked up the Björnsdóttir bit after age 27ish, so now it’s Steinunn Björk Björnsd. Pieper – spelled this way officially bc otherwise it’s too long for the bureaucratic world to accept! I asked my mum (Rafnhildur Björk) whether I could become her daughter by name, but she is oldschool and found it rather awkward. Also, in the patronymic system last names are in the genetive case so they change: I’d become Steinunn Björk Rafnhildardóttir, which is too long and to add to this problem my mum’s first name is an uncommon version of Hrafnhildur which she has to spell out all the time, or Steinunn Björk Bjarkardóttir, which could work except for the fact that a father called Bjarki would name his children Bjarkason/Bjarkadóttir (same as Björk in gen. case, except without the “r” in the middle), and this would require explaning each and every time, as being the child of a female by name is not as common as the old male name system.
Man alive, grammar and names are a tough subject to blog about in brief! But when have I ever been “brief”? :)
I’d like to just be Steinunn Björk, though by now I am kinda used to using the St. Pie version of my name online. I can foresee having to use Björk as a surname if I drop my two last names, online and when booking airfair and so forth, but that’s okay … except, in Sweden they use it as a last name and though not super thrilled to be an Icelander, I’d never wanne be mistaken for a Swede! I could also abandon my naming values and marry a foreigner and adopt his last name. As long as it doesn’t include the word “son” or “sen”, or the Irish O’Something bc that would irritate me all over again!
Enough already? Okay.
Here are some names I found on a dodgy website called barnaland.is, where tons of Icelanders have websites for their children using on the front page the same repeated cheesy design of poems/sayings about fathers, mothers, sons or daughters, starsign info and other rubbish. We used to visit these sites a lot when I taught Icelandic, I also worked in the office registering students and a few of us were interested in names and liked exploring the world and families of people with fun names :) The names will only make sense to Icelandic readers, except for the borrowed increasingly popular names like Bambi, Cactus and Venus, but not even I know what most of these mean, so I am not sure who made this list and thought someone would benefit. I am posting it anyway (perhaps with translations to follow in future bored moments), so I can get delete it from my desktop!
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girls:
Himinbjörg Hind
Ljótunn Hlökk
Loftveig Vísa
Bóthildur Brák
Þjóðbjörg Þula
Stígheiður Stjarna (Sthg Star)
Skarpheiður Skuld (Sthg Debt)
Kormlöð Þrá (Sthg Desire)
Ægileif Hlökk
Venus Vígdögg (Venus Killingdew)
Hugljúf Ísmey (Sweet Icemaiden)
Ormheiður Pollý
Geirlöð Gytta
Niðbjörg Njóla
boys:
Beinteinn Búri
Dufþakur Dreki (Sthg Dragon)
Hildiglúmur Bambi (Sthg Bambi)
Fengur Fífill
Gottsveinn Galdur (Goodman Magic)
Grankell Safír (Sthg Saphire)
Kaktus Ylur (Cactus Warmth)
Þorgautur Þyrnir (Sthg Thorn)
Melkólmur Grani
Ljótur Ljósálfur (Ugly Light Elf)
Náttmörður Neisti (Night-sthg Sparkle)
Hlöðmundur Hrappur (Sthg Fellon)
Hraunar Grani
Ráðvarður Otur (Sthg Otter)
Reginbaldur Rómeó
Kópur Kristall (Baby Seal Crystal)
