Tuesday, April 22, 2008

"And dash of Iceland names..."


Here is the picture of one of the windows from the Icelandic Social Security building. These are officials Icelandic names. Their is about 6000 thousands of them. In Iceland you cannot name your Children out of this list. If you want to have a "special" name, you have to ask the authorisation for it...

Not everyone get the authorisation...and for example the loving parents of Satania...Have been asked to find another name as the ones who wanted to name their son Annall...Wonder why ?

Even if there is some name that are not refused, the list keep getting bigger and last year about 40 of them have been added. Most of them are okay. For some of them... i am a bit wondering....Why....Why for example you want to name your kid.. Kaktus ? If you don´t like children you just don´t do some. You don´ t wait to have one and stick him a name that´s probably going to ruin his life !!! Some parents went all poetic and there is a boy in Iceland named: "Ugly Elf light" (Ljótur Ljósálfur - NB.. in old iceland ljótur mean clear...but not today not anymore). There is also now a lucky girl named: Air-kill Visa- (Loftveig) why not go all the way and call her Kill-Air Visa (it sounds like a Tarantino movie...)

Most of the Icelandic name really mean something. Gunnar means great warrior, Jökull mean glacier, and Bergur stone. I think this is cool.... Some people are even cooler, they have two names for example Bjartur Logi and its mean bright flame.

This is just like when you were a kid and having Indian names...But for real.

Okay it´s time for me to join my great warrior....Goða nótt.

Virgile


PS
: On the picture, you can also admire few of the special letters of the Iceland Alphabet: Þ, Ö, ð...

3 comments:

• Eliane • said...

He, he, I would definitely chose a name with a special Icelandic letter - gotta give some extra effort to those azerty keybord users. ;)

Jilly said...

Fascinating photograph and such an interesting commentary. I do remember reading that French babies had to be named after the Saints but I'm not sure that's true anymore.

Dear Europe said...

I have a few posts about Icelandic names. I think its interesting that Himinglaeva which appears in the Poetic Edda is not on the approved list while the names of the other 9 daughter of Ran & Aegir's are. Do you know why this could be? Weird.