Gripla - 01.01.2001, Síða 184

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SUMMARY
This article is a study of the names of Icelandic bulls in the latter part of the twentieth
century. It presents an analysis of a collection of names taken for the most part from
the lists and catalogs of cattle breeding societies and centres, including the names
given to nearly 1200 bulls from all over Iceland. Following a brief discussion of some
general features of animal names and previous research in the field in Iceland and
Scandinavia, a two-fold classification of the material is presented: first the names are
classified according to the probable motive for the choice of name, as has been com-
mon in earlier studies. Consideration is given to whether the name is derived from the
animal’s home or origin, its color or other physical traits, its behavior, and so forth. It
emerges that names derived from place-names (farms and districts) seem to be more
commonly given to bulls than to other domestic animals. The second classification
attempts to uncover the correlation between the corpus of bull names and other Ice-
landic words/names. Two matters are given special attention: whether bull names are
also known as names for persons, real or fictional, and whether the names are homony-
mous with Icelandic common nouns (or adjectives) — and if so in what semantic field.
It tums out that a portion of the names are to be found in old Icelandic sagas and
myths. The article concludes with a summary of the main results, including the fre-
quency of individual names, the most common motives for name selection, and the
apparent connection between bull names and Icelandic medieval literature. An appen-
dix contains an index of all the names in the collection, along with their frequency.
Aðalsteinn Eyþórsson
Orðabók Háskólans
Neshaga 16
107 Reykjavík
adall@lexis.hi.is