According to the island.is website, which is run by the government, the "Personal Names Register" includes "all Icelandic names that have been approved," but people can apply for permission to use names not on the list. Names must be "adaptable to the structure of the Icelandic language and spelling conventions" and also "not cause the bearer embarrassment."
The main reason they hesitated was the declensions- in Icelandic, everything has a gender, and a woman with a man's name, which her spelling was, means every single sentence you speak to her comes out screwy- all kinds of words are wrong when you speak to a woman with a man's name.
Its complicated- http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/04…
There are a bunch of other countries that are worse- There is an Elvis in Iceland.
Germany, France, Poland, Japan, many other countries have laws dictating what you can name your kid.
@3: no, her parent is called Bjarkar. Dottir means "daughter of", in this case, "daughter of Bjarkar". There are no last names as we know them, you just take your mom's or dad's first name and add "son of" or "daughter of". Like we used to, hundreds of years ago, to get names like Johnson.
In picking names for our children my two criteria were: They not be one of six Jennifers/Nathans/Jadens/Madisons in their 1st grade class (which as a David, I was). My other criteria was after, "What's your name?" the next question wasn't, "How do you spell that?" Kirsten, Kerstin, Kirstin, Kersten, Curstan, Churstin, Cur-Stan, Chhurrr-Steeen, etc.
Then my wife mentioned one possibility and in three attempts, I literally could not pronounce it. I then realized that my new, third criteria was that I be able to call out my own kid's name. Icelandic surnames and volcanos don't, for me, always pass that test.
At the point at which some of your geology is seriously disrupting international air traffic, I'm sorry, but that volcano should just be renamed, "Bob".
Blær's mother's name is Björk, like the singer. The father is not in the picture, and the genitive of Björk is Bjarkar, so the daughter gets the matronymic Bjarkardóttir.
Could be worse: I'm an immigrant to Iceland. Had the law here not been changed in 1995, *I* would have had to change my name.
The first-name telephone book, the weird naming convention, all that seems more manageable when you realize the population of the entire nation is like that of small city, say Lincoln, Ne, or Fargo-Morehead. It can't get that confusing when you know or know of a significant fraction of the population.
I would rather be named Girl than JayDinnh, and I'm not a girl.
So this girl has a parent named Bjarkardottir?
Fucking hell.
Its complicated-
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/04…
There are a bunch of other countries that are worse- There is an Elvis in Iceland.
Germany, France, Poland, Japan, many other countries have laws dictating what you can name your kid.
Then my wife mentioned one possibility and in three attempts, I literally could not pronounce it. I then realized that my new, third criteria was that I be able to call out my own kid's name. Icelandic surnames and volcanos don't, for me, always pass that test.
True story.
Could be worse: I'm an immigrant to Iceland. Had the law here not been changed in 1995, *I* would have had to change my name.