Icelandic Approved Names – Nordic Names | Hacker News Reader

Icelandic Approved Names – Nordic Names

nordicnames.de

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Here in Finland there is no list but if you try to give a name that has not been given before it goes to a board to be checked that it is appropriate.

Basically done to protect the child from names that they would be bullied for.

The rejected names are published too. Makes it pretty clear why the system is good to have in place.

In practice many choose to pick a name with a name day in order to fit in with this tradition.

I think this is totally fine.

Iceland is small. Its culture is perpetually endangered. And nobody gets to chose their birth name.

The same rules apply for an adult changing their name: https://www.skra.is/english/people/names/name-changes/

As someone who spent half my life with a name I hated, to me this is more "human rights violation" than "fine".

I’m with you on this, it seems pointlessly fucking restrictive and incompatible with individual liberties.

For adults, yeah. For children the system is great. In Finland the rejected names are published and there are many really horrible ones. A child is a person.

Is the name you hated a regular name in your language and culture? If so, I’m curious what made you hate it (I mean this literally, not skeptically).

I think the assumption here is that kids named “Aquamann” or “Adolf Hitler Campbell” are likely to hate their name, but people named “Guðmundur” (in Iceland) much less so. I’m curious what you think about that assumption.

Many reasons to hate ones name. Have an abusive father and your name happens to be John Jr? I wouldn't want to have my fathers name either, even though there's nothing wrong with the name John.

This is basically how all Icelandic surnames work. They are patronyms or matronyms. Björk Guðmundsdóttir literally means “Björk, daughter of Guðmundur”, because that was the name of her father.

Rules like “mandatory name lists” only lessen the damage an abusive parent can do.

I love my name precisely because it is (almost) unique. On the other hand my wife dislikes her given name because it is common. Limiting the name to a list limits individuality.

> As someone who spent half my life with a name I hated, to me this is more "human rights violation" than "fine".

It sounds like you can change your name, though? Your new name just has to be in the list. Are you saying you hate every name in the list?

That's a bit like if the government said I had to put a crucifix on my front door, but it's OK because I can pick from over 100 different colors.

No, it's not. At least in that case you could be making a case that you hate every color (because the color is irrelevant to you, or whatever reason you might have).

You haven't made such a case here at all. Hence my question: do you actually hate every name on the list?

Sorry I wasn't clear: I don't hate my old name, I hated being named that. Likewise, I don't hate every name in the list, but I would hate to be called those because they aren't the name I think of as "me".

I mean, that's a fine argument for changing the law. By all means go ahead and try to gather support for your cause, nothing wrong with that. It just doesn't follow that the rest of society not being willing to customize its culture 100% to every individual's personal liking is a human rights violation.

I have a crappy name - illegal in several countries - so I use a nickname.

I know people with terrible, even abusive names. They do the same thing: find a cool nickname.

Is this something you can do?

>It's culture is perpetually endangered.

Iceland is it's own island. How could a culture be any less endangered than that? Every culture is at least as inherently endangered as Iceland's.

Globalization risks blurring cultural distinctions away. Among cultures we're aware of on the world stage, Iceland punches above their weight class—they have only one member for every thousand Americans. I have to think their success is due to specific measures to retain their identity. Even Canada which has a tenth the population of the US has laws mandating that 1/3 of what's broadcast on the radio must be Canadian.

Also the island is kind of trying to kill whoever lives on it.

Exactly right imo. It's frustrating to see people treat these few surviving cultures as if they are the only ones worth preserving, as if all the others are a waste of time. I think this results in a lot of resentment.

I think you mistake my point: Iceland's culture _is_ perpetually endangered, more than most. These steps appear necessary for them, they appear to work, and even 100x larger countries whose cultures would survive anyway do some amount of the same.

Iceland’s small population is what makes it vulnerable. 326k people. That’s about the size of Cleaveland, Ohio.

and thats like city-of-cleveland, not the greater metro area (which is like ~2 million)

but iceland == smol

Icelandic spelling is subtle.

e.g.

Rejected: Amelia [1]

Accepted: Amelía [1]

Honestly, it seems as though this list's purpose is to standardize spelling as much as it is to bar weird names.

[1]https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Amelia [2]https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Amel%C3%ADa

I’m curious about the “Eventually Approved Names”. Some of them were rejected 4 times or more before being accepted!

I would love to know more; what’s the bar for “overturning” a previous denial? Do you have to present new evidence or present a novel argument? Or is it just a matter of public tastes evolving over time?

There are summaries posts of the recent decisions that has some hints but it doesn’t really go into much detail.

Well done, Aquamann parents. He'll always be called Aquamann in our hearts.

Aquamann Aquamannson

...and the sweet Aquamanndottir

Ditto Lucifer and 2 other variants. Does it have the same ring as, “all right, Satan” or is it actually a nice name in Iceland?

Note: you can request names outside this list if f.ex. one or both parents are citizens with a foreign background. I know this from first hand experience and it was a relatively easy process.

Many (most?) countries have naming restrictions. This Wikipedia article mentions the laws by country and there are some really odd restrictions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law

I find the entry for my country New Zealand to be pretty funny - although presumably less funny for the parents. I especially like that * is a banned name (for technical reasons: I think because it means NULL in the DIA for people with only one name - not because it interferes with search - I would also guess Asterisk as a word is allowed).

Here is Hungary's list: https://magyarnevek.com

My spouse is Hungarian, and despite living in the U.S. we decided to pick names off the list for our kids. We started by printing off the relevant list and then crossing out ones we each did not like.

Today I learned that I can be named Dan 1, or Dan 3, but Dan 2 is entirely off limits.

If that's what it takes to maintain the purity of Icelandic culture, then it's a price we must be willing to accept.

I can't believe Aquamann and Bald have been rejected. Who wouldn't want those names for their children?

Bald is a “normal” (as in, not something the parents invented) name, although it’s not as popular as it once was. It’s a derivative of Baldwin/Baldric/Beald/Balder.

I'm kind of surprised that Mohammed can't be found on either list. The most common first name in the world probably, and neither it hasn't been approved or rejected, meaning that nobody has even tried in Iceland. That's how small of a county it is I suppose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Iceland ~1000

It looks like there are only 35 in Iceland.[1] It's more popular in the continental Nordic countries, though.

[1]: https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Mohammed

Or how clustered cultures are.

I never understood cultures that name everyone the same name.

Why even bother naming them? The whole purpose is to be able to identify someone.

see: Monty Python, Australia, everyone is Bruce

In my culture we like to say all Americans are named John. I many John’s coming from the USA.

Mohammed is extremely popular in some countries but even in those territories there’s still a ton of other names.

Yeah, as an American, I only know one person named John. He happens to be a good friend, but I can’t think of anyone else with that name that I’ve met in recent time. Just because John or Mohammed are very popular names doesn’t mean you’re running into one each time you turn a corner.

That’s not to say that it’s not an accepted name. If your heritage/lineage/culture includes a name not on this list you can rather easily get an exception from these rules. Although, if not, you’re pretty much stuck with this list.

Never been a fan of the naming commitee. Sure, their reasoning may be to uphold Icelandic heritage, but honestly I always feel like that reasoning is a slippery slope into nationalism. But I do support having a naming committee to prevent asshole parents from naming their kid Kúkur or something.

Naming humans is odd. It has significant implications every day for the person, but they don’t really get a say in the matter.

I really respect parents who don’t see it as a form of accessorization. Your kid doesn’t need to be Duke Leto II. Paul will suffice.

Same in Hungary. Although you can petition for new names to be added to the register

There's a list of allowed names in Portugal too, but you can also request an exception.

Funny how Caesar is on the approved list. In fact so is Hannibal! Napoleon is the only world famous conqueror who doesn’t make the cut that I could find in a brief search.

Written in English, using a German TLD. I love the future!

I see that Michael is allowed, but Mike is not accepted or rejected. Can you be called whatever you want as long as you never formally use a variation?

'Nordic' is one of those words that are meant erase all things Uralic.

The linked-to page has sections with Finnish names and with Sami names.

Plus Greenlandic names.

Elaborate?

I am not the OP but I can hazard a guess.

"Nordic" has multiple meanings. One is "of the Nordic countries", which are the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland; and the autonomous region of Åland, plus a handful of other Norwegian areas.

Some also include Estonia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_identity_in_Estonia).

"Nordic" can also mean more specifically "Scandinavian", for example, the North Germanic languages are also referred to as the Nordic languages, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_folklore says "Nordic folklore" is "the folklore of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and the Faroe Islands", which you'll see does not list Finland or Greenland.

And if you look more closely, you'll see it's not actually "the folklore of Sweden" but "the folklore of ethnic Swedes", since Nordic folklore does not typically include Sámi folklore. There's also a long history of discrimination against the Sámi.

Taking it about 10 steps more extreme, Nordicism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordicism) used race psuedoscience to characterize the Nordic peoples as the most superior Aryans, and the master race. Finns were not seen as part of the Nordic race, but members of, for examples, the East Baltic or Mongolian races. In the US, Finns were sometimes not seen as white Europeans but as Asians, and thus justifying discrimination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...

Thus, when someone says "Nordic", do they mean the inclusive version which includes the Uralic Finns and Sámi? Or do they mostly mean the Scandinavian parts of the Nordic countries, with the Uralic and Greenlandic inhabitants as afterthoughts or even forgotten? Even if they mean the former, it can carry with it the exclusion of the latter.

The linked-to Nordic Names site includes Sámi, Finnish, and Greenlandic names, so it's more into the inclusive category.

Is it ensure sanitised sql queries

https://xkcd.com/327

> The Name Finding Guide is fun, easy to use and extremely effective

From https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Finding_The_Perfect_Name

I find this ... funny.

I'm happy to live in a country where we are free to choose our offspring's names (though I do think Elon Musk could have done better. I Checked and "Elon" is approved.)

I prefer state to protect children from their parents... Elon Musk is perfect example of this. "X Æ A-Xii" is just a joke... And exactly type of name that should not be given to children...

Nothing wrong with "Elon" I agree...

> "X Æ A-Xii" is just a joke...

To be fair, this kid will be in social circles where being maximally exotic is highly valued. It will probably never see a normal school from the inside.

Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like this name, but you have to see it in context (just like a traditional Icelandic name would be fine in Iceland, but not so much in the IS or Germany).

You’re free to choose your offspring’s names in Iceland too. There’s even a list to help you choose. ;)

By the way, a lot of American states have rules for that baby names are allowed too. And there have been cases where names that have adhered to state law have still been refused (like names attached to Nazism).

America is just a lot more opaque about what names are allowed and what are not.

The law is to protect children from dumb parents. You can give a funny name to a dog if you want, not to a person.

Nice! My name made the list.

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