Heritable
family names
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name, ...
were generally adopted rather late within
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Swe ...
.
Nobility
Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The character ...
were the first to take names that would be passed on from one generation to the next. Later,
clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
,
artisan
An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art ...
s and
merchants in
cities
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
took heritable names. Family names (surnames) were still used together with ''primary
patronyms'' (father's name plus an
affix denoting relationship), which were used by all social classes. This meant that most families until modern times did not have surnames. Scandinavian
patronyms were generally derived from the father's given name with the addition of a
suffix meaning 'son' or 'daughter' or by occupation like Møller - ( Miller ) naming tradition remained commonly used throughout the Scandinavian countries during the time of surname formation.
Forms of the patronymic
suffixes include: ''-son'', ''-sen'', ''-fen'', ''-søn'', ''-ler'', ''-zen'', ''-zon/zoon'', and ''-sson ''.
Denmark
The most common Danish family name
surnames are
patronymic
A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor.
Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...
and end in ''-sen''; for example ''Rasmussen'', originally meaning "son of Rasmus" (Rasmus' son). Descendants of Danish or Norwegian immigrants to the United States frequently have similar names ending in the suffix "-sen" or have changed the spelling to "-son".
Approximately one-third of the
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
population bear one of the ten most common surnames. More than two-thirds have a patronym ending in ''-sen'' in their full name. Many of these patronymics are, however, very rare, local or testimony of unusual descent, e.g. Heilesen from
Northern Jutland
Northern Jutland ( da, Nørrejylland) is a historical region in Denmark, defined as Jutland north of the Kongeå (with the region south of the Kongeå called Southern Jutland (''Sønderjylland'')). As with other historical regions of Denmark, Nort ...
, Holdensen and Boldsen from the former
Duchy of Schleswig or Common etymological classes of surnames are occupational (e.g., ''Møller'' - miller, ''Schmidt'' - smith, and ''Fisker'' - fisher, for example names taken after a village or farmstead inhabited by ancestors.
Other higher class people took heritable surnames during the following centuries,
clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
often ''Latinized'' names (e.g. ''Pontoppidan'' made from ''Broby'') and
artisan
An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art ...
s often ''Germanized'' names. Naming acts applying to all citizens were issued 1771 (for the
Duchy of Schleswig only) and in 1828. The rural population only reluctantly gave up the traditional primary patronyms. Several naming acts replaced the first; in 1856, 1904, 1961, 1981, 2005. The result of the first act was that most people took a patronymic surname as their heritable family name, with the overwhelming dominance of a few surnames as a consequence. Later acts have attempted to motivate people to change to surnames that would allow safer identification of individuals.
In the table, the top surnames in
Denmark
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, subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark
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are listed as of 1971, 2012 and 2022. In 2016, longtime most popular name
Jensen was overtaken by
Nielsen. The general tendency over the past century has been to give up the commonest names and adopt less frequently-used ones.
Norway
Norwegian surnames were originally patronymic and similar to the
surnames used in modern Iceland, consisting of the father's name and one of the suffixes "-sen"/"-son" (son) or "-datter"/"-dotter" (daughter), depending on the person's gender. Unlike modern surnames (family names), they were specific to a person and were not transferred to a person's children. Before 1500, hereditary surnames (family names) were almost unheard except among a few, select elite families. For a long time after that, they were inconsistently used and only found in the upper strata (often urban) of society. As late as 1801, only 2,2% of the rural population in
Western Norway
Western Norway ( nb, Vestlandet, Vest-Norge; nn, Vest-Noreg) is the region along the Atlantic coast of southern Norway. It consists of the counties Rogaland, Vestland, and Møre og Romsdal. The region has no official or political-administrativ ...
had a hereditary surname. Starting in the 16th century, use of hereditary surnames slowly grew in the cities. Around a fourth of the population of
Bergen
Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...
had hereditary surnames by the end of the 17th century, a number which had grown to about 40% by the early 19th century. After this, the use of hereditary surnames in the cities accelerated—by 1865, the vast majority of citizens of
Trondheim
Trondheim ( , , ; sma, Tråante), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, and ...
had hereditary surnames, and by the beginning of the 20th century most of the urban population in Norway had hereditary surnames, although non-hereditary patronymics were often used in addition to the family name. The 19th century saw large-scale migration from rural to urban areas, and migrating families often adopted a formerly non-hereditary patronymic as their family name during the move. Around the turn of the century, the common use of hereditary family names became common in rural areas too. In rural areas, toponymic surnames—usually derived from the name of a farm—were a common alternative to adopting a patronymic as the hereditary family name. Finally, a law passed in 1923 ordered that all newborn children should be assigned a hereditary family name at birth, but did not force people who still did not have a family name to adopt one.
Most Norwegian toponymic surnames derive from farm names, and these farms were frequently named after the geographical features of the farm's location. Many farm names and thus surnames derive from just one word describing the most obvious or distinguishing geographical feature of their location (such as "Dal", meaning "valley"), while others again are compounds of several words describing the farm's location or geographical features (such as "Solberg", meaning "sunny mountain/hill"). Example of surnames deriving from farm names include "Bakke"/"Bakken" (hill or rise), "Berg"/"Berge" (mountain or hill), "Dahl"/"Dal" (valley), "Haugen" or "Haugan" (hill or mound), "Lie" (side of a valley), "Moen" (meadow), "Rud" (clearing), "Vik" (bay or inlet), and "Hagen" (pasture). As Norwegian
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
has undergone substantial standardisation and change since surnames were made mandatory, toponymic surnames are commonly spelt in archaic ways. For example, the surnames "Wiik" and "Wiig" are common variant spellings of "Vik" with well over a thousand people bearing each surname,
and "Viik", "Vig", "Viig" and "Wig" (among others) are additional, less common variants of the same name. Similar archaic variants exist of many other Norwegian toponymic surnames.
Today, surnames derived from patronymics are decreasing in popularity in favour of surnames derived from toponyms. In 2009, 22.4% of the Norwegian population had a surname with the suffix "-sen", while among the newborns of 2009 the share was down to 18.4%. The decline of patronymic-derived surnames is not a new phenomenon – the early 20th century saw a similar shift in the frequency of surnames, caused by demographic changes due to successive waves of migration from rural to urban areas. For example, the proportion of the population of Bergen bearing a patronymic-derived family name decreased by half in the forty years after 1900.
The following table lists the 20 most common Norwegian surnames as of 2013:
Sweden
The most common surnames in Sweden are originally patronymic. Family names ending with the suffix "sson" are the most common names in Sweden. In 1901, the Names Adoption Act was passed, which abolished the patronymic practice. From 1901, everyone had to have a family name that was passed down to the next generation.
Many family names consist of items from nature, for example Lind/Lindberg (linden/lime + mountain), Berg/Bergkvist (mountain/mountain + twig), Alström/Ahlström (alder + stream), or Dahl/Dahlin (valley). Sometimes the first part of such a composite name refers to the family's place of origin e.g. the
Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg (, ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty p ...
family originating from Strinne; the second part being just ornamental. Families also frequently have military-oriented names such as Skarpsvärd (sharp sword),
Sköld (shield) and Stolt (proud). Those names were originally assigned to soldiers under the military allotment system in effect from the 16th century. As in Denmark, the clergy Latinized their names up to about the 18th century, e.g.
Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
. Due to the greater diversity of these names each specific name is less common than most patronymic names.
The listing of 20 most commonly Swedish surnames as of December 31, 2012. Different spellings are included in every name but the name is presented by the most common spelling:
Swedish Name Statistics
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See also
* Icelandic name
Icelandic names are names used by people from Iceland. Icelandic surnames are different from most other naming systems in the modern Western world by being patronymic or occasionally matronymic: they indicate the father (or mother) of the child ...
* List of most common surnames in Europe
This is a list of the most common surnames in Europe, sorted by country.
Albania
At the moment, listings for the most common names are unavailable for Albania. However the most common names include the following:
* Common names denoting ...
References
External links
The 100 most common surnames in Denmark
Most Common Surnames in Sweden
Most Common Surnames in Norway
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scandinavian Family Name Etymology
Surnames
Germanic-language surnames