Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
About 15 years ago you started to see some changes to this very long tradition, as children started to ask for their last names to be based on the mother and not the father, often because of divorces or what not.
A famous footballer in Iceland took his mothers name and it really started a trend, since then a lot of people have been playing with it, my sister took our mothers maiden name as her middle name in order to pay tribute to our mother who passed in 96.
I think what most gay couples and married gay couples are doing is just keeping their names as is, the idea of taking a family name is quite unheard of in Iceland, so having a family with lots of different last names is quite normal.
What really needs a serious overhaul is the approved names list, Iceland has laws on what you can name your child, so Shaquina you is out of luck here  |
All true. The only additional thought I'd offer is that there is another possibility if you adopt a child, which is that they could also keep their original patronymic, which of course you're technically born with. As you point out, a family with many last names is the norm, so there would be nothing noteworthy about that. If they had a child via sperm donor they would likely just take a matronymic instead, or at least that's my assumption.
Notably, there are also a few "surnames" floating around in Iceland, but not all that many (Nordal, Laxness, Zoega, etc); generally those families have something in their ethnic or genealogical background which explains it. I often get asked about that because of Halldor Laxness, which of course is not a patronymic name.
As for the law governing names, the book has a lot of names in it of various ethnicities--and my understanding is that as long as the name permits Icelandic declension the Mannanafnanefnd will permit it even if it's not in the book.
Anything that reins in parental naming practices a little is fine by me.
But the courts are apparently reining in the government's authority on this matter anyway--recently a teenage girl with a male name was given permission by the courts to keep her name on constitutional grounds, so perhaps this is something the state will eventually get out of.
