Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.10.2018, Side 14

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14 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • October 15 2018
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Imagine being a teen in the 1880s, having just
emigrated from Iceland with your parents and
six younger siblings. North America presents
quite a culture shock. Now imagine that your father
calls a family meeting to have “The Talk.” He starts:
“Now that we’re here, we need to do our best to
fit in. I know you’ve all grown up with your names
and are used to them by now. Even your mom kept
her birth name after she married me. But we’ll all
have to change them. People here have a hard time
understanding us when we talk and can’t figure out
how to spell our complicated names. They don’t even
have some of the same alphabet characters. We have
to all start using a more common English-like last
name ...”
It’s fascinating seeing the variety of ways names
are either deliberately changed at a particular point
in time or simply gradually evolved. Remember,
nobody was required then to go to the motor vehicles
department and register for a license where exacting
legal names and dates of birth might matter. Few
Icelandic families retained their Icelandic last names
for very long. The -dóttir, -sson, and -son suffixes
on last names were often dropped for something
that could be more easily understood, spelled, and
appreciated in their predominantly English-speaking
new homeland.
Those of us on the Icelandic Roots research team
love a good challenge. Nothing presents more of a
challenge and reward than connecting someone with
slim knowledge of their Icelandic roots or who was
adopted from an Icelandic to a non-Icelandic family.
One such inquiry came through last month from
someone in Toronto whose great-grandmother was
Stella Jackson. She died young and little was known
about her, other than she was Icelandic. More on
Stella later.
Name evolution is a beautiful bouquet of
conventions with three primary types of flowers.
Type 1: The family simply adopts the father’s
own last name ay birth as everyone’s last name in the
family – with some variance perhaps. For example,
Jónsson easily becomes Johnson, Guðmundsson
easily becomes Goodman, Sveinsson may become
Swanson, or Einarsson may become (a little more
obtusely) Anderson.
Type 2: The family adopts the next generation
back’s father’s last name, who perhaps stayed in
Iceland. For example, a single woman named Guðrún
Einarsdóttir (daughter of Einar Hallórsson) might
adopt Gudrun Halldorson as her new name in North
America. After all, that’s the tradition here – being
given your father’s last name at birth as your own
last name. And that’s what happened down through
the generations here. Nothing requires that naming
convention, it’s just our tradition. Or as another
example, the wife and children of Eiríkur Þórðarson
(son of Þórðar Brynjólfsson) may all take on as their
last name Bringleson.
Type 3: The family may altogether ditch naming
conventions based on the father’s name and shift
their new last name to something more romantic
– the name of the farm they came from or the area
in Iceland that they left behind. That’s how we find
Icelandic families today with names like Reykdal,
Skagfjord/Skagford, Austmann/Eastman, Myrdal, or
Hofteig.
Many name changes have been documented,
but more interesting ones are being found all the
time. (See the table showing just a few of the more
interesting evolutions.)
But what about Stella Jackson?
Rarely are mysteries solved by knocking on the
front door, finding it ajar, and walking through it. If it
were that easy, they wouldn’t be mysteries. Often, it’s
a back or side door you have to find and slip through
to solve these mysteries. We knew Stella Jackson
married a Mr. White, so she was Stella White, age
27, when she died in 1905. A short death notice in a
1905 edition of Heimskringla indicated Stella White
was the daughter of Mrs. B. Lindal (we recognize
Lindal to be an Icelandic-evolved name) who lived
on Simcoe Street in Winnipeg. There’s the key to our
back door. If we determined who Mrs. B. Lindal was,
we can perhaps figure out Stella Jackson’s parents
and original Icelandic birth name.
After a few days of independent work, several
members of the Icelandic Roots research team
collaborated on a video conference call and shared
their finds and hunches – the pieces started to fall into
place. A 1915 obituary of Mrs. B. Lindal (birth name
Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir) led to information that she’d
been married before to a Gunnlaugur Sakkeusson/
Zakkariasson … an obtuse but acceptable name-shift
to Jackson. But we needed more proof.
The 1915 obituary states Gunnlaugur died shortly
after immigrating with Sigurlaug and their two
daughters … only one of whom was living in 1915
– Stella’s sister. With that, if could determine the
identity of Stella’s sister and her parents, using the
side door, we could find Stella’s own birth in Iceland.
And we did! She was born Sesselja Gunnlaugsdóttir.
The final clincher is that birth dates for Sesselja
Gunnlaugsdóttir in Iceland and Stella White in
the 1901 Canadian census match exactly. Sesselja
became Stella.
After Gunnlaugur’s death, his wife, Sigurlaug,
mother of Sesselja Gunnlaugsdóttir (Stella Jackson-
White), remarried Gunnlaugur’s brother, Benedikt
Lindal Sakkeusson. Benedikt dropped the Sakkeusson
name and took up his middle name of Lindal as his
last name. And, of course, the couple was living on
Simcoe Street in Winnipeg in 1905.
Whew – mystery solved! Knowing name
evolution types and being persistent in tracking every
little clue and variation might be the key you need for
that back-door solution.
Having “The Talk” with your kids
THE MYSTERY OF ICELANDIC SURNAMES IN NORTH AMERICA
David E. Johnson
Seattle, WA
Árnason
Ásmundsson
Aðalsteinsson
Bergmannsson
Bjarnason and Björnsson
Dinusson
Elíasson
Erlendsson
Eymundsson
Eðvarsson
Friðbjörnsson and Friðriksson
Gíslason
Guðbrandson
Guðmundsson and Guðnason
Halldórsson
Hallgrímsson
Harvarðarson
Injaldsson
Jóhannesson
Kristjánsson
Magnússon
Ólafsson
Runólfsson
Sigvaldason
Stefánsson
Þorkelsson
Þorsteinsson
Anderson
Olson
Athelstan
Bergson, Berg
Barnes, Barnell, Bearnson, Benson
Dennison
Ellis
Wilson
Emerson
Edwards
Fredrick, Fredrickson
Giles, Gillis, Gilson
Brandson
Goodman, Goodmanson, Gudmundson
Halderson
Hall, Hallson, Holmes, Holm
Howardson
Engleson
Hanson
Christianson, Christie,
Maxin, Maxon
Olsen, Olson
Reynolds
Walterson
Stevens, Stevenson, Stephenson
Kelly
Oliver
Some of the more interesting direct (Type 1) name evolutions
ICELANDIC NAME ENGLISH VARIANT