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OT and nitpicking but the part about Icelandic names is actually slightly incorrect. The typical Icelandic "surname" is made up of the genitive case of the fath
by orng 12y ago
OT and nitpicking but the part about Icelandic names is actually slightly incorrect. The typical Icelandic "surname" is made up of the genitive case of the father's name (in rare cases the mother's) followed by "son" or "dóttir", not "sson" or sdóttir". It just so happens that the genitive case of most names ends with an "s", e.g. Gunnar->Gunnars or Guðmundur->Guðmunds. There are however many names where this is not the case. My name for instance, "Örn", is "Arnar" in genitive case and thus if I had a son his surname would be "Arnarson" and my daughter's surname would be "Arnardóttir".
- steanne 12y agowhat do you do if the parent has a foreign name?
- orng 12y agoI am far from being an expert but I think the most common thing to do is to just take on the surname of the parent as a sort of family name. So if Björk's father was John Smith then she would be Björk Smith. Family names are not unheard of and there are even a few Icelandic ones (although they are definitely the exception). Name laws in Iceland are really strict[0] but they mostly regard peoples "given name". I think you actually get to choose the surname of your child. I have seen cases where people have gone with the "-son" or "-dóttir" formula, typically in cases where the foreign name has an Icelandic counterpart, e.g. "John" and the Icelandic "Jón". The surname of the child could then be either "Johnson" or "Jónsson". [0]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/iceland-strict-naming-convention-cardew-family http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/iceland-strict-...