Overview
About Icelandic naming traditions
Names built from a parent
A patronymic is formed from a father's given name, while a matronymic uses a mother's. Icelandic examples combine a parent's name in the appropriate grammatical form with an ending such as -son or -dóttir. A child of Gunnar might therefore be Gunnarsson or Gunnarsdóttir; a child named after Anna might be Önnuson or Önnudóttir. The last name identifies a parental relationship and need not be shared by every member of the household.
Variation within the system
Names can refer to either parent or both, and siblings can consequently have different last names. Inherited family names also exist, although they are less common. Registers Iceland describes further options for people with a neutral gender registration, including the ending -bur, meaning offspring, or a parent's name in the genitive without an added ending. Icelandic naming is therefore a living system with several recognized forms, rather than a universal rule that everyone takes their father's name.
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