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From: Margit <>
Subject: [Tronder] The Viking Lady
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 21:36:51 -0600

This site is great for anyone researching Norway.
http://www.vikinganswerlady.org/ONNames.htm
An excerpt:
How did the People of the North choose names for their children? Could
you perhaps list some first names and then, perhaps, an explaination of
surnames?

In general, parents named their children after a deceased relative or
hero. In some way the child was believed to inherit with the name the
gifts or personality of their namesake: this belief almost seems to have
been one of reincarnation of the named relative in the new child once
the name was bestowed.

It was very common to give children the names of honored relatives, for
the Northmen believed that children would partake of the virtues of the
ones whose names they bore. Relatives recently dead, in particular, were
thus remembered by their kindred, a custom resulting from a half belief
that the spirit of the beloved dead lived again in the little child.
Present day Scandinavians still "call up" deceased members of their
families in this manner. (Social Scandinavia p. 61).

The religious basis of the practice was that a departed ancestor is
reborn and again rejoins the living members of the family if his/her
name is given to the new-born child. Only the departed ancestor was,
therefore, renamed so long as the belief was a living force....
Originally the naming of the first two sons must have been very varied;
it could have been after the father only in a small proportion of
cases, or after an uncle in perhaps a somewhat larger proportion of
cases; or again the child might be named after some other relative of
the parents, as a cousin. Undoubtedly, however, it was a grandparent in
a relatively large number of cases. If one or more of the grandparents
were dead the old belief would practically decree it and filial love
would perpetuate the practice after the belief no longer existed in its
old form. As long as the old belief continued the cases of renamings of
the child's great grandparent would undoubtedly dominate, but as soon
as it ceased to be believed that reincarnation of the departed in the
child took place with the bestowal of the name of the deceased, the
possibilities for new forms of the practice were at once at hand. (Flom,
p. 249, 251).

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• [Tronder] The Viking Lady by Margit <>