Faroese surnames are the surnames borne by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands in the North Sea. They are closely connected to the colonization and settlement of the Faroe Islands by the Norse or Viking peoples at the tail end of the Early Middle Ages in the ninth and tenth centuries. This ensured the arrival of Norse languages such as Danish and the subsequent development of Faroese, a North Germanic language. Along with these came Norse or Viking surname conventions, which were already more advanced than those of most other European ethnic traditions by the tenth and eleventh centuries. Most of these surnames were patronymic and patronymic surnames predominate in the Faroe Islands today.
History of Faroese surnames
The history of Faroese surnames is tied in closely with the history of the Norse expansion out of Scandinavia between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Scandinavia had been on the edge of the world for the more advanced civilizations of the Mediterranean in ancient times, with the Romans laboring under the mistaken idea that the peninsula was actually an island. Meanwhile, the Faroe Islands were uninhabited and largely ignored by the rest of the world, though it may have a claim to being the land of Thule mentioned by Pytheas of Massalia, the fourth-century BCE Greek explorer from what is now Marseille who wrote an account of his voyages around the North Sea.[1]
It was only in the ninth and tenth centuries CE, as the Norse (also known in various contexts as the Vikings, Danes, Rus’ and Northmen) began expanding out of Scandinavia that the Faroe Islands were finally settled. As they were, the peoples of Denmark and Norway who were arriving here transplanted their languages to the Faroe Islands, along with other islands and island chains around the North Sea such as Iceland, the Shetland Islands and the Orkneys. Alternatively, more recent archaeological evidence suggests that some settlers from Britain and Ireland had arrived to the Faroe Islands as early as the sixth century, but if they did they had no lasting impacting on the surname landscape.[2]
These Norse cultures were ahead of the rest of Europe in that they already had adopted the concept of patronymic surnames quite extensively by the end of the Early Middle Ages and so surnames were common in the Faroe Islands by the High Middle Ages (1000–1300) and late medieval era (1300–1500). These differ slightly from the surnames one will find in Denmark and Norway today, as Faroese developed over time as a separate language, one which is very similar to the other Norse languages, but which is a slightly different North Germanic language, with its own regional variations. These variations have survived owing to the development of a proud and unique Faroese identity amongst the Islanders, one which stressed its autonomy from the cultures of Denmark and Norway into modern times, even though the islands remain a territory of Denmark, albeit self-governing in some respects. This means anyone studying Faroese genealogy and family history will generally have to consult Danish state, census and church records to acquire information on their ancestors.[3]
Faroese naming conventions
The naming conventions of the Faroe Islands follow the typical Norse pattern in that there is a heavy emphasis on patronymic surnames, ones which effectively mean ‘son of’ someone or other. These names indicate that an ancestor was the ‘son of’ an individual who was a notable enough figure back in medieval times to have been considered the founder of that lineage. These names are easily identifiable as they tend to end in the suffix ‘-sen’. This marks Faroese surnames as slightly distinctive from Norwegian and Icelandic surnames, which tend to end in the suffix ‘-son’ or ‘-sson’, with an ‘o’ instead of an ‘e’. While the overwhelming majority of Faroese surnames are patronymics ending in ‘-sen’, a small number break from this pattern. Djurhuus, for instance, is a surname borne by just over 500 Faroe Islanders and means ‘house of Djur’. Nearly 200 Islanders carry the surname Dahl, which is a toponymic surname referring to a ‘valley’.[4]
Most popular Faroese surnames
The population of the Faroe Islands is quite limited, being approximately 53,000 people. As such, the surname landscape can be plotted very precisely. The most popular Faroese surnames from amongst this limited population set are as follows:
- Joensen – A variant of ‘son of Jorgen’, a popular Norse surname, this is the most common Faroese surname, born by approximately 2,400 people on the islands.
- Hansen – The second most common Faroese surname, held by over 2,100 islanders, it is also a patronymic surname meaning ‘son of Hans’.
- Jacobsen – The third most common Faroese surname, one which means ‘son of Jacob’.
- Olsen – Approximately 1,700 Faroe Islanders have this surname, meaning ‘son of Ole’, making it the fourth most common Faroese surname.
- Poulsen – This is the fifth most common Faroese surname. It means ‘son of Poul’, Poul being the Norse version of Paul.
- Petersen – Nearly 1,300 Faroe Islanders have this surname, the sixth most common across the archipelago. It means ‘son of Peter’.[5]
Famous Faroe Islanders
- Hans Andrias Djurhuus – An acclaimed Faroese poet who was active between the 1910s and the 1940s.[6]
- William Heinesen – A Faroese polymath who worked variously as a writer, poet, composer and painter during a long career between the 1920s and the 1980s. He was awarded the Danish Holberg Medal in 1960, the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize in 1965, the Faroese Literature Prize in 1975 and the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize in 1987. He famously renounced his candidacy to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 when it was rumored he might receive the accolade, claiming it would be inappropriate to grant it to a Faroese author writing in Danish.[7]
- Jens Martin Knudsen – A former football goalkeeper for the Faroe Islands national team, Knudsen was famous for a wearing a hat while playing on account of a head injury he received as a teenager, earning him the title ‘the bobble hat goalkeeper’.[8]
- Eivør Pálsdóttir – The most acclaimed Faroese musician of contemporary times.[9]
See also
Explore more about Faroese surnames
- 1890 Denmark Census record collection on MyHeritage
- 1930 Denmark Census record collection on MyHeritage
- Denmark Church Records, 1576-1919 record collection on MyHeritage
- Beginning Danish Research at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Danish Research with Online Records at MyHeritage and Beyond at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ Ian Whitaker, ‘The Problem of Pytheas’ Thule’, in The Classical Journal, Vol. 77, No. 2 (December 1981 – January 1982), pp. 148–164.
- ↑ https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/faroe-islands-settled-before-vikings/
- ↑ W. N. Lockwood, ‘The language and culture of the Faroese Islands’, in Saga-Book, Vol. 13 (1946–1953), pp. 249–268.
- ↑ https://forebears.io/faroe-islands/surnames
- ↑ https://surnam.es/faroe-islands?utm_content=cmp-true
- ↑ https://snar.fo/rithoevundar/d/djurhuus-hans-andrias
- ↑ Leyvoy Joensen, ‘Atlantis, Bábylon, Tórshavn: The Djurhuus Brothers and William Heinesen in Faroese Literary History’, in Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 74, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 181–204.
- ↑ https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/news/01c8-0f84bdf474a8-86e375fe51b8-1000--knudsen-hangs-up-his-bobble-hat/
- ↑ https://guidetofaroeislands.fo/music-in-the-faroe-islands/best-of-eivor/