This article centers on the Norwegian naming customs, and what dilemmas or characteristics capable provide the online specialist
Do you meet the brick wall while exploring their Norwegian ancestors online? This post might offer newer and more effective clues.
Background records:
The “first name” had been from olden days or over till about 100 years ago the name of the individual. You probably did n’t have a surname in the manner we’ve got nowadays. The outdated vikings considered that the child would attain characteristics and defense against whatever comprise named after, like pets and weapons. The existing norse brands initially contains two ingredients, a prefix and a suffix.
Some norse prefixes and suffixes:
Well, there you choose to go, build several of those old norse brands for your family, sample prefix “Arn” + suffix “finn”, and get “Arnfinn” a standard title in Norway nowadays, or “Sol” + “veig” to get “Solveig”.
I assume you have got all read about “han Ole”, and had good laugh for the Ole jokes. But have your ever wondered Source regarding the actual meaning of the name? “Ole” is in fact a Danish type of the Norwegian “Olav” or “Olafr”, that’s a vintage norse title. The eldest identified type was “Anulaibar”, constructed of the prefix “anu” which means “ancestor”, as well as the suffix “laibar” therefore “descendant” or “heir”. I am not sure basically’ll risk a translation of these, but I’ll try it out, “ancestor’s-descendant”. Exactly what a nice label for a genealogist to locate, nevertheless don’t want an ancestor by the name of “Ole Olsen”, unless you have any other information!
Through all days, the outdated labels have already been the main topic of haphazard improvement, and developed along with the phonetics for the spoken vocabulary. Most brands were reduced, and are scarcely recognizable nowadays using their original form. But many of the older norse labels include preferred these days in certain kind or any other. Folks furthermore started to use names composed of singular element, and people include considered to originally have already been “nicknames”, as they frequently had been descriptive of the person. Examples of this become names like Kеre (Kaare), which suggests that anyone got wild hair. Since the old vikings began to trade and travel much more commonly in European countries, they even followed international names of imported directly into Norwegian practice. Up through the years there is great impact from other components of Europe like Germany, Britain and Denmark.
When christianity was actually enforced, folks steadily started to list their children after saints and persons talked about from inside the bible. By naming kids after a saint they might bring thought that this could provide the child some type of security, just like the outdated norse names. But those saints, and various other numbers from bible, have names which was not necessarily suitable in to the Norwegian code and many of those labels where therefore “Norwegianized”. Several of the most usual names in Norway origins from christianity, like Johannes, Hans and John. Both Hans and John are brief types of Johannes, which comes from Hebrew label “Jochanan”, initially “Jehohanan”. Some other popular labels were Kristian, Kristen, Christian, and Christoffer, which all need stronger sources in christian custom.
That which we discover, when working with the sources like censuses and traveler databases, is that labels tend to have most rather comparable paperwork. We’ll furthermore discover that there were fantastic differences in how they comprise authored. You may think this would not be an issue, everbody knows your ancestors title, and certainly will accept they once you see they inside source you will be employing. This is certainly correct, but not because of the electronic root. Lets state your understood the great-great-grandfather’s term got Christopher, and gone seeking your for the 1801 on the web census within Digitalarkivet. Your typewritten “Christopher” and missed him. The main reason may be that we now have so many types of that name inside database. Searching for brands you start with “Krist” returns 4 variants, by trying to find labels you start with “Christ” we obtain another 13 variants:
ey have 3 young children: