{"id":145067,"date":"2018-02-18T18:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T18:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/?p=145067"},"modified":"2018-02-26T09:45:15","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T09:45:15","slug":"icelandic-names-and-name-giving-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/icelandic-names-and-name-giving-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Icelandic names and naming practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is taken from the Iceandic Statistics:<\/em><\/p>\n

The analysis of naming practice in Iceland shows that:
\n*only 200 given names (eiginn\u00f6fn) account for the names of almost 80% of the male or female population
\n*more than 35% of people less than 30 years old inherit some of their grandparents\u2019 given names. This percentage is higher for older generations
\n*over 8% of people less than 50 years old inherit some of their parents\u2019 names, more often men than women. The percentage is about the same
\nfor older generations
\n*newborns\u2019 names in Iceland are correlated to popular names from sports
\n(football, handball), music and film around 82% of people have patronymics and\/or matronymics (f\u00f6\u00f0urn\u00f6fn, m\u00f3\u00f0urn\u00f6fn) as their last name, about 4% have Icelandic family names (\u00e6ttarn\u00f6fn), about 14% have different types of last names, mostly non-Icelandic
\n*when only the father has a family name, most children inherit it (about 70%), but a significant percentage receive a traditionally formed name (about 30%, mostly patronymics)
\n*when only the mother has a family name, most offsprings receive a traditionally formed last name (about 85%, mostly patronymic, slightly higher for men than women) and only a small proportion (about 15%, slightly higher for women than men) the mother\u2018s family name.
\nThe distribution of birthdays has evolved with time. For instance there is a significantly higher numbers of births during summer months in the past decade than 50 years ago when births were more evenly distributed throughout the year.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong>
\nIn this paper, register data is used to analyse given names\u2019 popularity by age, gender and birthplace (landsv\u00e6\u00f0i) in Iceland and to shed light on naming practice, such as how likely it is to inherit grandparents\u2019 or parents\u2019 given names1 (eiginn\u00f6fn), what are the recent cultural influences reflected in the choices of first names for babies, how likely is to have a patronymic (f\u00f6\u00f0urn\u00f6fn), a matronymic (m\u00f3\u00f0urn\u00f6fn) or a family name (\u00e6ttarn\u00f6fn), depending on age, gender and various attributes of parents.<\/p>\n

Most popular given names<\/strong>
\n Given names<\/strong>
\nAccording to the 1703 census, there were 387 and 338 given names for men and women respectively The number of Icelandic names in Mannanafnanefnd \u2014 database1 at the beginning of 2017 was 1,912 for men and 2,118 for women. At the same time, the total number of given names according to Registers Iceland was 6,188 for men and 7,322 for women, these numbers include names of foreign origin and most of them have very few occurrences in the population.
\nAlexander was the most popular given name of new born male children in 2016, followed by Aron and Mikael. For new born girls, Emil\u00eda, Emma and El\u00edsabet were the most frequent names.
\nIn the population as a whole the rankings of the most popular given names have not changed significantly in the last five years. Among males, J\u00f3n is the most frequent first name, followed by Sigur\u00f0ur and Gu\u00f0mundur, while J\u00f3n \u00de\u00f3r, Gunnar \u00de\u00f3r and J\u00f3n Ingi are the most frequent double names. Among females, Gu\u00f0r\u00fan, Anna and Krist\u00edn are the most popular names while Anna Mar\u00eda, Anna Margr\u00e9t and Anna Krist\u00edn are the most popular double name combinations.
\nThe frequencies of given names have changed through time. For example, about one in five women was called Gu\u00f0r\u00fan when the 1703 census was conducted, but only one in ten according to the 1910 census. During the same time, the total number of female names tripled. In the 100 years which followed, the number of Icelandic female names in Mannanafnanefnd\u2019s database has doubled while the name Gu\u00f0r\u00fan is three times less frequent. The population itself has increased approximately seven times since 1703.
\nIn addition to frequencies of names, their rankings tell an interesting story. Classical names which are most common in the population as a whole have been constantly in the top 20 for the last 100 years, as shown in figure 1a for female names and figure 2a for male names. However, fewer children born in the last 10 years have names like Gu\u00f0r\u00fan, Krist\u00edn, Sigur\u00f0ur, Gunnar or \u00d3lafur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is taken from the Iceandic Statistics: The analysis of naming practice in Iceland shows that: *only 200 given names (eiginn\u00f6fn) account for the names of almost 80% of the male or female population *more than 35% of people less than 30 years old inherit some of their grandparents\u2019 given names. This percentage is higher for older generations *over 8% of people less than 50 years old inherit some of their parents\u2019 names, more often men than women. The percentage is about the same for older generations *newborns\u2019 names in Iceland are correlated to popular names from sports (football, handball), music and film around 82% of people have patronymics Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":145064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","cat-7-id"],"acf":[],"views":3600,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}