On 5 Jan 2021 at 21:20:09 GMT, ""NY"" wrote:

"Tweed" wrote in message
...

It's just a cultural thing, like many Europeans have names like Magnus
Magnus*son*, and innumerable similar Slavic suffices.

Slavic? I thought it came from the Icelandic. There surnames come from the
first name of the parent.
So Magnusson is the male offspring of a chap whose first name was Magnus
something elseson. If he also had a female offspring her surname would
be
Magnusdottir. (Magnus’s daughter)

It made for an interesting telephone book....

It must make genealogy "interesting" because every generation of a family
will have a different surname, as will brothers and sisters.

In Icelandic, do *both* the sons and the daughters take the father's first
name? I have vague memories of being told that daughter's sometimes take the
mother's first name - so Magnus and Oddny (*) might have a son with a
surname Magnusson and a daughter with a surname Oddnydottir (rather than
Magnusdottir).

Do Icelandic women generally take their husband's surname after marriage or
do they normally / always keep their maiden surname?


(*) The only Icelandic person I knew was a woman with this rather unusual (I
hesitate to say Odd!) first name.

In the back of my mind I seem to recall that our word 'odd' is derived from
Old Norse when it meant 'pointed' or 'sharp' or similar.

In the course of time the meaning drifted so it meant something which 'stood
out' from the normal, that is it was 'exceptional'. Hence 'Odin' and similar.
I suspect the Icelandic meaning is closer to the Old Norse than to ours.
--
Robert