In Iceland, we do not take the family last name when we get married, but instead, our names mean “the daughter of” or “the son of.” It goes all the way back to the Vikings, like my last name is “Eiríksdóttir” which means the daughter of Eiríkur, but my brother’s last name is “Eiríksson” or the son of Eiríkur. But if I would have taken my husbands name it would say that I am the son of my father-in-law which I am obviously not. Since my husband's name is Dagur, our children the last name will be "Dagsdóttir" or "Dagsson". What? not the actual name plus son or dóttir? If Icelandic were only that easy! We have so many declensions and the last name is drawn by the "eignarfall" or we put to the front of it to find what it should be. "Eignarfall" actually means what you own. So again you can see how the Vikings affected us, and we still keep that tradition.
In most cases, children are named after their father, but with the 21st century and social changes, some parents put both of their names in the last names of their child. That can be a very long last name, though like it is not long enough, then my last name would be “Bergrúnardóttir-Eiríksdóttir.” We normally do not use last names and everybody is just called their first name, even if they are your professor or your doctor.
We also have a website called "Íslendingabók" which means the book of Icelanders. On that website, you can search a name of an Icelander and see if you are related to them. You can also see on that website when a persons’ birthday is and if the are related to you enough you can see who their siblings are and where they were born. This keeps a pretty good overview of Icelandic people and you can see your genogram of your family.
This means that when we have a big family reunion, almost no one has the same last name. Although it may seem confusing to some people, for us it makes a lot of sense and is easy to catch on.
Another interesting fact about names and Iceland is that we have a special committee that has to review names. Like in the states you can name your child any thing you want - does not matter if its a boy or a girl. The Icelandic Naming Committee decides if the name can easily be pronounced and if its inappropriate in the language. The name also has to be accepted by the Icelandic grammatical system. The name also has to be gender-inappropriate, that is has to be either masculine noun or feminine. That means that a girl can not be named a boys name.
The first time anyone known I was Icelandic just by looking at my name was when I signed up for CrossFit in CrossFit Rowan. The coach asked me to sign my name on this sheet of paper, then he looked super excited at me "Are you Icelandic?" I could not belive it, I said yes. He knew it just from looking at my last name. Because we have very good CrossFit women from Iceland, and in a few years now the Icelandic women have been in the top. So Iceland does not only have good soccer team but also the fittest woman on earth, Katrín Tanja Davíðsdóttir!
A little video to show how proud I am of these fit "Dóttirs"
