This isn't so much a "word mechanic" as it is a name mechanic I can't figure out. Specifically, a Scandinavian surname. Icelandic, if I'm not mistaken. Example: There's a dude called Gunnar and he has a son named, I dunno, Hank. That would be Hank Gunnarson, back in the ancient days where nobody was keeping records, right? Then, one day, Hank Gunnarson has a daughter called Annie. She then becomes Annie Hanksdottir? Or does she follow grampa's lineage and become Gunnarsdottir? That's all fine and dandy, but let's assume somewhere around Annie's time, people get locked into their surnames. Now Annie has a son. Kjell, because I do know Scandinavian names, I do. How's that gonna work? Like, in modern day. Is Kjell gonna be stuck with the "dottir" affix? If you're curious, I'm asking because I'm thinking about making a character Norse and I'd like to use the most Scandinavian name I can think of, which for me is that "dottir" add-on. Like "Mac" and "O" in the more Celtic persuasion, but those sound more gender neutral, though I believe Mac actually stands for "son of."
If you think about it, that would mean there are never any "dottirs", because all daughters would take their father's surnames. That might depend on what happens if Annie gets married. Does she retain her own name or does she take her husband's name?
mac and o have become locked in for Irish surnames as written in English. When translated back to Irish, Ann O'Connell would be Áine Ní Chonaill while her brother John would be Seán Ó Conaill, gender specific. No idea what they do in Iceland but always thought Magnus Magnusson an unfortunate name.
Icelanders still use patronymics (or sometimes matronymics) rather than inheritable surnames*. So if Kjell is a real-world Icelander, he’s not locked into Hanksdottir; his name will depend on his father’s. If his father is Einar, he’s Kjell Einarsson. When might a matronymic be used? Maybe Annie and Einar had a messy divorce before his birth. Maybe nobody knows who the father is. Maybe Kjell hates his father’s guts—with or without reason—and doesn’t want the name connecting them. In all of these cases, he could opt for the matronymic and be Kjell Anniesson. * there are a small number of Icelanders who use surnames, which are either relics of a brief period where it became fashionable to adopt them or from last names Icelanders adopted while living abroad. A lot of the latter are Danish. Iceland only allows people to use surnames if they have a right to them via inheritance; new ones were banned in 1925. So if you want a -dottir derived surname for Kjell, it probably needs to Danish (-datter), Norwegian (-dotter), or Swedish (-dotter) and come from the transition era so it could be inherited.
Until 1925, the use of permanent surnames were very rare, and was adopted into Nordic/Scandanavian naming customes through the Danish. Until then, it was patronymic and matronymic and changed with each generation. (Children were named after their mothers in cases of illegitimate births or if the mother's family was wealthier than the fathers). So, "Gundersson/dottir" would become "Kjellsson/dottir" would become "Olafsson/dottir" etc etc etc. (Source: Family Search)
It's funny you should ask, Bakkerbaard, because I'm in the process of writing a novel set in Iceland of 1,000 A.D. Obviously, I did lots of rigorous research about everything to do with Iceland: its history, geography, political system, religion, people's names, clothes, food, etc... after all, I didn't want to make a silly mistake and be thought a fool. X Equestris and J. T. Woody are absolutely correct. However, there is one question I'd like to ask: what about letters like á, ð, ú, þ and so on, which are iconic to Icelandic orthography? For instance: 1. My MC's aunt is Freydís Eiríksdóttir (with the two letters í and ó). 2. At an early part of the story, my MC has to go to Þingvellir, the site of Iceland's ancient parliament. In the interest of accuracy, I'd love to use these as much as I can. But since I'm writing for an English-speaking audience, and in the interest of clarity, can I (or should I) use "Freydis Eiriksdottir" and/or "Thingvellir", etc.?
Author, Juliet Marillier, writes celtic historic fantasy taking place in old ireland amongst the tribes. She uses the names as they would be pronounced back then, and uses a phonetic name pronunciation guide on a character sheet in the beginning of her books. You can do it that way. It didnt bother me and it was really interesting to learn how to pronounce irish names
Thank you, J.T. Woody! I am not an expert on Icelandic pronunciation, but even I knew the sounds for the ð and þ letters (which are similar in any case). The other letters are also easy to learn (thanks to some YouTube educational videos I found). So, in Icelandic, Freydís Eiríksdóttir would be close to the English pronunciation of "FREY-dish I-riksh-DOH-tirr". (Just breaking it into syllables, and noting which ones are dominant. I also checked Þingvellir, which becomes "Thing-vet-leer" ... quite tricky). Thanks again!
In current "traditional" naming, Annie would take her husband's name. So you absolutely have a point I didn't think about, but now that I am, it's starting to make sense that it had to take until Vikings Valhalla until I heard the "dotter" version. Cool. Thanks for the flowchart. I love seeing the evolution of names. It's something so mundane that you never really think about it, right? I always just figured Johnson was the son of John, which I guess he is, but it's such a regular English name that I never thought it would be Scandinavian. Ye olde letters. Those are pretty cool. Saw a video on them by Robwords, not long ago. Turns out, which I'm sure is not news to anyone here, that "Ye" is actually just "the" but with the old style letter for "th" which looked a lot like a Y. Anyway, between my advice and JT's, you should definitely take JT's, but I'd say you have to take understandability into account. It's harder to keep track of characters if you're not sure how their name sounds in your head. Had this problem with a documentary about samurai. It's really interesting, but Japanese names don't sound anything like the words I'm used to, so not a lot of knowledge has been retained for me. Might just be a personal thing, though. Never was great at studying. One other factor I'd actually take into account, though to a lesser degree, is what machine I'm working on. I mean, I won't have a problem memorizing the Ascii codes for those symbols, but I don't have a numpad on the laptop I do most of my writing on. That's basically why my characters will only rarely mention Motörhead. It's illegal to spell it without the heavy metal umlaut, but stopping for a copy/paste can be a hassle is murder on the flow. So, uh... did I answer anything at all? Fuck it. Take JT's advice. I love dabbling in Gaelic, but goddamn. It's like they were given too many letters at the start and are clamoring to get rid of them. It's why I can't pick up girls in Ireland or Scotland. Can't get past the "what's your name" stage. (Sure, that is why I can't pick up girls and I will stick to that story.) If you give me a word with fourteen sillables, I'm not gonna be able to figure out your name is Mary.
I'm so frustrated! apparently the series of books I was talking about has been reprinted. the character sheet has been removed! at least, in the ebook it has. In the original release of the print version, it was there A few names off the top of my head I remember that surprised me: Book 3: Cathal (I mispronounced it as "Cathle"... or Castle with a lisp, lol)= "Ca-HAL" Book 4: Fainne (i mispronounced it as "Fay-Anne")= "Feen-ya" Book 2: "Sídhe Dubh" (mispronounced as "Siddy Dub-uh") = "She-dove" scrolling through the book now, without the pronunciation pages, im like "how TF do you say "Meán Geimhridh"???"
its too quite in this dang library.... i startled people with the "HA!" I just let rip after reading this
I'd have known that one - I know how "Sidhe" is pronounced from bean sidhe (banshee) and Ao Sidhe, and I know "bh" is pronounced "v" because I once knew a girl named Siobhan (sh'vorn).
It always sucks when reprints mean errors, but this goes beyond 'errors' and into 'royal cock-up' territory. Nowadays, it'd be "Alban Arthan" ... but obviously it wasn't that back then!
