The Patronymic Naming System

Started by Bob Frydenlund on Thursday, March 11, 2010
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3/11/2010 at 6:27 AM

You can call me John Or you can call me Jon or you can call me Jaen or you can call me Jahn?????

According to the patronymic naming system which was being used in Norway at the time, he was called Jonson because his father's name was Jon.
Under the patronymic naming system, sons of Jon were called "Jonson" -- Jon's son, while daughters of Jon were called "Jonsdatter" -- Jon's daughter.
These patronymic names, however, were not part of the child's baptized name, indeed the baptized name consisted only of a first name, such as Daniel, and sometimes a middle name, such as Rasmus. Thus, in the church records for my great grandfather it says in the column called Barnet's fulle navn (The child's full name): "Daniel Rasmus".
The patronymic name was added in day to day interactions because there could be several persons named Daniel Rasmus in a community.
Referring to someone as Daniel Rasmus Jonson helped to clarify that it was Daniel Rasmus, the son of Jon, that you were talking about, and not Daniel Rasmus, the son of Ole.
Unfortunately, the first name followed by the patronymic name was not always sufficient to identify a person: there could be several persons in a community with the name Daniel Rasmus Jonson.
To avoid any confusion, rural Norwegians would therefore add the name of the farm where the person was living -- not as a name, in the modern sense of the word, but as an address or identifier.
My great grandfather was therefore known as Daniel Rasmus Jonson Føllesdal.
For those of us who are searching for Norwegian ancestors, the fact that a patronymic naming system was used in Norway up until about 1900 poses certain problems that I want to address in this article.

The first point to keep in mind is that while our ancestors may have added a farm name to their name, the farm name was not used as a surname, but rather as an address.
As an example, we can look at Daniel Rasmus Jonson's father, Jon Jonson, my great great grandfather. He was born and raised on the Hanebrekke farm in Nordfjord, and he was therefore called Jon Jonson Hanebrekke.
As an adult, however, he moved to the Føllesdal farm and was thereafter known as Jon Jonson Føllesdal.

Thus, we can conclude that farm names were not used as surnames, but rather as an address:
"There goes Daniel Rasmus Jonson Føllesdal -- Daniel Rasmus, the son of Jon, who lives up the hill at the Føllesdal farm."
Farm names were also spelled differently from one source to the next. I have seen the farm name "Myrold" spelled "Myrvold", and "Roset" spelled "Rosæt." Given the fact that names are spelled inconsistently in both original as well as secondary sources, what are we to do? I believe that the most historically accurate approach is to write down each variation and note the source and date of the document. If our ancestors were not consistent with the spelling, then it would not be historically accurate for us to ignore that reality and arbitrarily choose one version of the name as the correct name.
In the "naming mess" that our Norwegian ancestors have left us, there are, however, two bright points that we should keep in mind: First of all, the patronymic system immediately identifies the first name of your ancestor's father. If you find an ancestor named Povel Jonson Rosetter, whose name is spelled Poul Jonson Rosæter in another document, you do know one thing for certain: his father's name was Jon!

You are now one step closer to moving back another generation!

The second bright point has to do with how the first name was selected. The first name was not chosen at random, but followed a strict rule: the oldest son was named after his paternal grandfather, and the second son after his maternal grandfather.
Likewise, the oldest daughter was named after her paternal grandmother, and the second daughter after her maternal grandmother. When the names of the paternal and maternal grandparents had been used up, the great grandparents names were used, but in no particular order.

There were, however, a few exceptions to these rules:
1) the name of a deceased spouse was used first, i.e., when a widow or widower remarried and had a child, that child would be named after the deceased spouse;
2) if the parent of a child died prior to the child being baptized, that parent's name would be used (if necessary the name would be feminized - from Wilhelm to Wilhelmina, for example);
and 3) if a child died, the next child would be named after the deceased child.

This rule (and the exceptions) can be very useful when doing genealogy research, because it gives important clues as to what names to look for in the previous two generations.

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