Stúdentablaðið - 01.03.2008, Page 30

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002. lcelandic names are often taken from the sagas
SORRY. YOUR NAME
HAS BEEN DECLINED
What’s in a name? asked Juliet (Icelandic form,
Júlietta). She should have come to Iceland. But you
are already here and have probably struggled to
pronounce the name ofsome ofthe peopleyou meet.
You’ve already figured out that because ofnicknames
every other man you meet is called Siggi, Steini or
Gummi and that’s why you can’t find them in the
phonebook. And you have figured out the patronymic
system that allows everyone in a family to have
different names. And that the books in the library
are ordered by the first names ofthe author and so is
the phonebook. Icelanders are informal about names
and a lot of foreigners are surprised when a new
teacher enters their class announcing that he would
like to be called Jón instead of Mr. Guðmundsson,
which is the standard in most ofthe western world.
It is more often considered appropriate to address
someone by their first name, also in quite formal
circumstances like newspaper articles, so prime
minister Geir Haarde is just Geir. Because the last
name - the father’s name - is really is just that. From
where I come from the standard is that you can only
call children by first name, every one else is either
called their full name or Mr/Ms/Mrs X.
JÓHANNES FROM BÓNUS?
But then how do you know which of the 6.000 men
called Jón in Iceland we are talking about? In the old
days this was easy. Men would be known by the place
they lived or the name of their farm, ”Jón í Laxdal”
or "Gunnar á Hlíðarenda”. Today men are known by
their businesses, for example "Pálmi í Hagkaup” and
”Jóhannes í Bónus”. But often it is just expected that
you should know who is the topic. Iceland is not that
big. I guess this is also the reason why some lecturers
do not introduce themselves when they come as guest
teachers. They assume that we know them. But not all
of us do...
So names and their use can make you feel different,
but it can be used as a measure of integration. You
know that people are starting to think of you as one
of their when they start to try to decline or Icelandify
your name. I have started introducing myself as
"Hanna” when I can’t bother to explain why I carry
this impossible indeclinable name. Yes I am foreign,
and so on and so on. This also happens in writing,
when I have sent a mail or letter and the answer has
comes back, ”dear Hanna”, or the one time when they
changed me into a man, ”Hannes”. I take it as a
compliment of my language skills.
FOG AND LIGHT-ELF COME IN,
DINNER’S READY!
Sometimes I pretend to be more Icelandic than I
am by using my adopted name, which I think is
perfectly fine. Immigrants who took up Icelandic
citizenship should up until 1996 take an Icelandic
name. Today the laws are more loose and even allow
for children of foreigners to be given a name that
is not approved by the official "names commitee”
(i. mannanafnanefnd) but originates in their own
culture. The mannanafnanefnd was founded to
assure that names were given in accordance with the
law and to rule in case of doubt. And there are plenty
of limitations.
Icelandic name laws limit the number of names a
child can bear to three. The name, induding the
father’s name, cannot be longer than 32 characters
as the national registry computer system stops there
(!). TV host Helgi Seljan discovered this when he
tried to baptize his daughter Indíana Karítas Seljan
Helgadóttur. 34 letters. Seljan is a family name, but
you cannot give your child a family name unless this
tradition is already on your family.
Mannanafnanefnd is also very strict on not allowing
Icelanders to take foreign sounding names and
release a report every year of which names have
been allowed and rejected of the names people have
wanted to call their children. So in the later years it
has been confirmed that you CAN call your child Þoka
(Fog), Ljósalfur, (Light-elf), and Spartakus. Silliness
is seemingly not an issue, the main rule is to ensure
that names can be applied to Icelandic grammar and
spelling. So Pia and Sven, Kjarrval and Valgard got the
thumbs down.
THE WEIRDER THE MERRIER
Eufemía was approved though. Icelanders seem to love
old and archaic sounding names with meaning. I don’t
know how much people think about this everyday, I
just remember how I laughed for days when I had been
learning Icelandic for a while and found out that is
was possible to be called "Ljótur”. Ljótur in modern
Icelandic means ”ugly", but Ljótur’s parents may not
necessarily have been that evil. The word originally
meant bright, clear, but this meaning was abandoned
for the present meaning, ugly, and is also used in
women’s names, for example Bergljót. Then there are
the tree names, Hlynur means maple, Askur means
ash. Ástráður cracked me up too, ’ást’ is love,
and ’-ráður’ comes from ráð - advise. The medicine
students of the University of Iceland run a sexual
education program for youngsters in llth to 13th
grade with this name. I just can’t imagine carrying it
around. Ormur is not a very common name either - it
means ”worm”. The old meaning of the word is more
"snake” but that’s not too positive either. Ófeigur
means ”he who is meant to live”, this could have been
very meaningful in times when infant mortality rates
were high. Now the leader of the emergency ward in
the National Hospital is called Ófeigur. I hope it rubs
off on his patients.
OUTIN THECOLD
But some names are not so loved. There is reluctance
to use the names of evil persons from the sagas. No
one was named after the villain Mörður of Njáls saga
until the sixties, now there are five of them, still not
a lot. Among the women, the femme fatale of Njáls
saga, Hallgerður, was avoided for many years, but
now 41 women are called Hallgerður. Maybe that
has something to do with feminists making an effort
to restore the image of Hallgerður. She was not (the
traditional reading) a jealous woman who did not know
her place, but rather an independent misunderstood
woman who was abused by men around her.
There really is fashion and trends in Icelandic names.
One is to have two first names which has been known
since the saga period but died out. It was re vived in the
century after the Danish king Christian the 4th gave
his children double names back in the 17th century.
But in the 1811 census there are still only about 50
people with double names. Today about 60% of the
population have double names.
Another fashion came up in the 19th century, again
from Denmark. A particular aversion of mine was
to form woman’s name from a man’s by adding a
feminizing ending. So you can meet women called
Eggertína, Guðmundína and Ivarlína, Kjartína,
Brynjólfsína, Oddlína and so on. These names were
very unpopular amongst icelandic scholars who called
them bastard names which should be removed from
the Icelandic language because they were a threat to
the purity of the language. Most of these names are
very rare today, not all go equally well on the tongue.
Men’s names have also been formed from women’s.
Heiðar comes from Heiður, Hrannar from Hrönn,
Aldar from Alda and more. ■
FuII list ofapproved names here:
http://www.rettarheimild.is/mannanofn/