Language Trainers Blog

A few blogs ago, I shared the story of the Icelandic teenager, Blaer Bjarkardottir, who wasn’t allowed to use her own name, as it wasn’t on the list of Government approved girls names. The list ensures that names fit in with Icelandic grammar and pronunciation rules. Blaer and her mother, Bjork Eidsdottir, decided to oppose the ruling and it was overturned! The Icelandic Government will not be appealing the courts’ decision, so Blaer will officially be Blaer, instead of Stulka (Girl) from now on.

Blaer’s name is actually pronounced as bly-r, as it is written Blær. A handy guide to Icelandic pronunciation can be found here, for those of you interested. There are 32 letters in the Icelandic alphabet, so this guide is very useful!

To be able to use your own name is a right we take for granted. We’ve all heard stories of parents naming their children crazy names, like the Egyptian dad who named his daughter Facebook,  and the Israeli couple who also took inspiration from the social network, naming their daughter Like. Some countries, however, have guidelines regarding name choices. Some even have a list of approved names that you must choose from to name your offspring. One of those countries is Iceland.

Blaer Bjarkardottir is a 15 year old Icelandic girl who is referred to on her passport, school registration and bank details as Stulka (girl). She is currently suing the Icelandic government for the right to use her own name; as “Blaer,” which means light breeze in Icelandic, is not one of the 1,853 Government approved girls names. If parents would like to use a name which isn’t on the registry, they must apply to have it approved by a special committee. Blaer was not approved as it takes a masculine article.

In Iceland, a first name has importance because what we would refer to as the surname is not actually a surname, it refers to the parents. The name is made up of two parts. In Blaer Bjarkardottir’s case, Bjarkar refers to Blaer’s father, and dottir means daughter. Therefore, if she was a boy, her name would be Blaer Bjarkarson.

If the courts fail to overturn the decision of the committee in a hearing on January 25th, Blaer and her mother are willing to take the case to the Icelandic Supreme Court. They are the first people to sue the Icelandic Government over a name.

In Germany, you must be able to tell the child’s gender from it’s given name; this is also true of Denmark. Denmark also has a list of only 7000 names to choose from. In China, names which use characters that cannot be typed on a keyboard are banned. There are over 70,000 Chinese characters, yet only 13,000 can be represented on a computer. As a result, some people have had to change their names so that they can use their ID cards!

New Zealand doesn’t allow people to name their children anything that “might cause offence to a reasonable person” yet allowed one set of parents to name their child Number 16 Bus Shelter. Adolf Hitler and Fish and Chips were deemed unsuitable, though!

Yet another film festival (I did let you know it’s the season!) to remind you about. If you’re learning a Scandinavian language, this one’s for you. The Nordic Film Festival showcases independent films from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.

The festival runs from Friday November 30th to Wednesday December 5th at 3 independent venues across London – Cine Lumiere in South Kensington, Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, and Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.

A full festival line up and more information can be found here.

I stumbled upon an excerpt from a paper describing the taxation of surnames in Iceland in an effort to prevent people from assuming family names (surnames).

The surname as many of us know it, a family name that is passed on through generations (usually through the male line), is uncommon in Iceland. About 15% of people there have one. The rest bear a first name, followed by a second name which indicates whose son or daughter they are. Telephone books list citizens in order of given name, not surname, which is an oddity the locals are proud of.

In an unsuccessful attempt to stop the trend of adopting surnames, officials in 1881 passed a law that required people to receive royal permission, pay a flat fee, and then an annual fee per syllable of their chosen last name.

I wonder if the very rich, showy types would purposefully choose multisyllabic names, just to prove that they could afford them?

Thorn, or þorn (upper case Þ, lower case þ), is a letter in the Icelandic alphabet, pronounced as a voiceless dental fricative (‘th’ as in the English ‘thin’).

In Old English, the letter thorn was used to represent either the voiceless or voiced dental fricative (‘th’ as in the English ‘that’).  Its use continued through most of the Middle English period, but it started to be replaced by ‘th’ in the 14th century.  The shape of thorn also began to change around this time, and in some cases became indistinguishable from the letter Y.  ‘Th’ had almost completely taken over by this point, and thorn remained only in some abbreviations, such as thorn with a superscript ‘e’, as a short form for ‘the’.  The arrival of the printing press essentially erased any old form of thorn, and it was thereafter represented by ‘Y’.  This resulted in the printed form ‘ye’, and we still see the use of ‘Ye Olde…’ to imply antiquity.  I imagine few people owners of Ye Olde Tea Shoppes know that ‘ye’ should still be pronounced ‘the’, not /ji:/ (‘yee’).

Unfortunately (in my mind) the most likely place you will see thorn in English these days would be as part of a cheeky emoticon (smiley).  :-Þ is a person with their tongue sticking out.

Now if someone asks if you’ve done anything interesting today, you can tell them you were looking at þorn on the internet.