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So Nae mentioned an old headmaster of his, Ståhl [sto:l]. Is Vh used often in Swedish? Or is it just a name influenced by German?

It's never used in actual words, only names, and rarely even there.

What Ulrike said. I had a classmate whose last name was Ståhle.

I had a class mate whose name was Köhler.

rickardspaghetti wrote:I had a class mate whose name was Köhler.

That's entirely German, though, I guess.

Those are "abnormalities" left over from when the spelling system wasn't set in stone.

And it's not just <h>, there are plenty of other examples of "decorative spelling", such as Steen (instead of sten) and Quist (instead of kvist). Nowadays only used in names, but I believe they used to be used in other circumstances too, because people thought it looked pretty.

Yeah, English has that too, with names like Byrd, Fforde, etc, and the doubled final consonants in names like Carr, Tripp, and Mudd.

Soap wrote:Yeah, English has that too, with names like Byrd, Fforde, etc, and the doubled final consonants in names like Carr, Tripp, and Mudd.

Yes, and all those British names like Thorpestudpoundstoneunderthwaite, which is pronounced [tEd].

Latifah, Sharifa, N'ketiah, Shuhneequah, Shaneeckwa, Shaniquah, T'meka, Temika, Temeka, Temeqa, Teneekah...

vecfaranti wrote:Latifah, Sharifa, N'ketiah, Shuhneequah, Shaneeckwa, Shaniquah, T'meka, Temika, Temeka, Temeqa, Teneekah...

One of these is not like the others.

vecfaranti wrote:Those are "abnormalities" left over from when the spelling system wasn't set in stone.

But many of these names are newer than the spelling system.

I guess. The few Icelandic surnames there are are the same. They all have "weird" spellings. My dad's for instance, Briem, pronounced /pri:m/, spelt as if it were /prɪ:.ɛm/. Same with names like Snævarr, Johnson, Maack and Stephensen.

Are you Gunnlaugur Briem?

No, he's my grandmother's cousin. I don't carry the name because of the way name inheritance law used to work when I was born (my dad gets the name from his mother, so in his case it's actually not a last name but a middle name, which means I don't automatically inherit it unless my parents want me to, and when I was born, people were only allowed one middle name, which would have meant giving up the middle name they wanted for me).

Drydic Guy wrote:

Soap wrote:Yeah, English has that too, with names like Byrd, Fforde, etc, and the doubled final consonants in names like Carr, Tripp, and Mudd.

Yes, and all those British names like Thorpestudpoundstoneunderthwaite, which is pronounced [tEd].

Don't forget those Danish names like Hans Sprogvidenskabeligtipåvirketafremherskendemgangs which is pronounced [spro?k].

There are probably still people who think that it looks cool, so I suppose new name elements like that are made up occasionally. Particularly since making your own family name has become very common recently - probably something to do with feminism, women not wanting to take their husband's name. And then of course there are people making up new names from old elements, like "Steenquist" or whatever. (That one looks unlikely tho.)

But I think it's not simply a matter of the words not having had a regularised spelling in the past. A person 300 years ago would not have written "steen" in an ordinary text, to my knowledge. It was probably just like how people in the eighties thought everything looked cooler with z, or written in CamelCase.

And, when you think about it, kind of like how people in the last decade thought it looked cool to spell your name with all lowercase.

Hey Chuma: Dunno if you get the newpapper called "City" in Scania, but there was this article about the last trend in baby-names in Stockholm, and there was some kid named Elvis-Leopold or something. Makes me ashamed to live here. To me there seems to be some competiton goinng on around between the latte-mothers: the more outlandish name you can give your kid the more you score.

We do get it, but I think they have different issues.

I did read, however, that the Icelandic man-name-council (no I can't spell it) has decided it's okay to be named Elvis, and the local Elvis fanclub head is thinking about changing his name.

Chuma wrote:We do get it, but I think they have different issues.

I did read, however, that the Icelandic man-name-council (no I can't spell it) has decided it's okay to be named Elvis, and the local Elvis fanclub head is thinking about changing his name.

I wonder what the genitive of Elvis would be... Elviss, I presume? Somehow the patronymic Elvissson does not seem right, though...

Viktor77 wrote:

Drydic Guy wrote:

Soap wrote:Yeah, English has that too, with names like Byrd, Fforde, etc, and the doubled final consonants in names like Carr, Tripp, and Mudd.

Yes, and all those British names like Thorpestudpoundstoneunderthwaite, which is pronounced [tEd].

Don't forget those Danish names like Hans Sprogvidenskabeligtipåvirketafremherskendemgangs which is pronounced [spro?k].

*[ʔ:əʔ]

Chuma wrote:And it's not just <h>, there are plenty of other examples of "decorative spelling", such as Steen (instead of sten) and Quist (instead of kvist). Nowadays only used in names, but I believe they used to be used in other circumstances too, because people thought it looked pretty.

Oh, yeah. My very own last name is 'Skoog' (woods, forest) rather than 'Skog'.

Viktor77 wrote:

Drydic Guy wrote:

Soap wrote:Yeah, English has that too, with names like Byrd, Fforde, etc, and the doubled final consonants in names like Carr, Tripp, and Mudd.

Yes, and all those British names like Thorpestudpoundstoneunderthwaite, which is pronounced [tEd].

Don't forget those Danish names like Hans Sprogvidenskabeligtipåvirketafremherskendemgangs which is pronounced [spro?k].

Drydic's joke was funny. This one isn't even close to the truth.

Travis B. wrote:

Chuma wrote:We do get it, but I think they have different issues.

I did read, however, that the Icelandic man-name-council (no I can't spell it) has decided it's okay to be named Elvis, and the local Elvis fanclub head is thinking about changing his name.

I wonder what the genitive of Elvis would be... Elviss, I presume? Somehow the patronymic Elvissson does not seem right, though...

In Scandinavian, at least, the spelling would be Elvisson anyway, because triple consonants are not allowed in spelling. For example, 'lamm' + 'målning' would become 'lammålning' and not 'lammmålning'. I can't image Icelandic would be any different...

On another note, 'Elvisar' actually doesn't sound too implausible in my ears...

Shrdlu wrote:Hey Chuma: Dunno if you get the newpapper called "City" in Scania, but there was this article about the last trend in baby-names in Stockholm, and there was some kid named Elvis-Leopold or something. Makes me ashamed to live here. To me there seems to be some competiton goinng on around between the latte-mothers: the more outlandish name you can give your kid the more you score.

It was Nils-Iggy.

Icelandic does in fact use triple consonants when a word ending in two is compounded with one starting with the same letter. The most commonly example is probably þátttakandi (participant, part+taker: þátt+takandi). But we can have fun with this: rassskítur (assshit), kopppiltur (pottieboy) and sullloka (spillsealer).

Elvis is Elvis in the genitive (just like Dennis and bronkítis). It was actually just accepted by Mannanafnanefnd as a name for a little boy last year, and if he ever has a son, his son will be Elvisson.

Come to think of it, my dad's name is Magnússon. I guess that's an example of a non-standard patronymic, because the normal genitive of Magnús is Magnúsar. The expected s-genitive of that would actually be Magnúss, so you'd expect Magnússson.

vecfaranti wrote:Icelandic does in fact use triple consonants when a word ending in two is compounded with one starting with the same letter. The most commonly example is probably þátttakandi (participant, part+taker: þátt+takandi). But we can have fun with this: rassskítur (assshit), kopppiltur (pottieboy) and sullloka (spillsealer).

Elvis is Elvis in the genitive (just like Dennis and bronkítis). It was actually just accepted by Mannanafnanefnd as a name for a little boy last year, and if he ever has a son, his son will be Elvisson.

Come to think of it, my dad's name is Magnússon. I guess that's an example of a non-standard patronymic, because the normal genitive of Magnús is Magnúsar. The expected s-genitive of that would actually be Magnúss, so you'd expect Magnússson.

Magnus, ha! That's another one of those silly, foreign names! It isn't even a real name, it's a misunderstanding. Hrmph, hrmph, hrmph.