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  • Greenlandic surnames
    • Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
    The flag of Greenland.

    Greenlandic surnames refer to the surnames held by the 57,000 or so people who live in the very thinly populated, but very large, territory of Greenland, which is still controlled broadly by Denmark. Because of its associations with the Norse countries of Scandinavia, and with Denmark in particular, the most common surnames in Greenland are of Norse derivation, being names like Olsen, Petersen and Nielsen. However, unlike other North Atlantic countries like Iceland and the Faroe Islands that also experienced Scandinavian settlement from medieval times onwards, the situation is complicated in Greenland by the fact that the majority of the population there are of Inuit ethnicity, a people who did not have the concept of surnames prior to modern times.  

    History of Greenlandic surnames

    Statue of Erik the Red in Greenland.

    Northern Greenland was sporadically occupied by Inuit groups as far back as the third millennium BCE. However, these Inuit groups did not develop surnames in the traditional manner of patronymic, toponymic, occupational and descriptor surnames. Conversely, studies in recent decades have revealed how Inuit culture did employ more esoteric naming systems, some involving the names of the dead and other traditional Inuit methods. Details of these Greenlandic Inuit naming systems were published in a study entitled Kalaallit aqqi in 2016. This aside, most Greenlandic surnames today are not derived from Inuit culture, despite nearly 90% of the population of Greenland being of Inuit background.[1]

    Instead Greenlandic surnames today are overwhelmingly Norse in origin. The first Norse settlers to western and southern Greenland arrived at the very end of the first millennium CE as part of the voyage led by Erik the Red.[2] Norse settlements were maintained here sporadically in the centuries that followed, sometimes being entirely abandoned. It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the Danish government, which was in a royal union with Norway throughout the late medieval and early modern eras, began to reassert its claim to Greenland and established new settlements in southern Greenland, with the current capital Nuuk being founded as a Danish colony in 1728. With this, Danish naming conventions, with a Greenlandic twist, were imported into Greenland.[3]

    Greenlandic naming conventions

    Greenlandic surnames largely follow Danish surname principles. This means that they are overwhelmingly patronymic surnames which end in the suffix ‘-ssen’ or ‘-sen’, meaning ‘son of’. The name does not change from generation to generation to indicate who one’s father was. Instead it stays static and indicative that an ancestor centuries ago was a ‘son of’ some individual who was deemed to have established the family line.

    One might ask why, if some 88% of the people of Greenland are of Inuit heritage, and Inuit people have their own naming traditions, did Danish-derived surnames end up being so dominant in Greenland? The answer to this question lies in state policies towards Inuit peoples which were adopted in both Greenland and Canada in response to the perceived lack of surnames amongst the Inuits that could be used for official records. For instance, in Canada, between 1941 and 1978, Inuit people were issued with disc numbers on a physical identity disk or badge that gave them a number that could be used to record them and to allow them to access state services. Over time, in light of the sterile nature of simply issuing somebody with a number, surnames were adopted and/or imposed. In the case of Greenland, many Inuits simply chose to adopt Danish-sounding surnames.[4]

    Most popular Greenlandic surnames

    The most popular Greenlandic surnames tend to be:

    • Olsen – The most common Greenlandic surname, held by over 1,700 people here and meaning ‘son of Ole’.
    • Petersen – The second most common Greenlandic surname, held by over 1,600 people and meaning ‘son of Peter’.
    • Jensen – The third most common Greenlandic surname, held by over 1,600 people and meaning ‘son of Jens’.
    • Nielsen – The fourth most common Greenlandic surname, held by over 1,400 people and meaning ‘son of Niel’.
    • Hansen – The fifth most common Greenlandic surname, held by nearly 1,300 people and meaning ‘son of Hans’.
    • Lyberth – The sixth most common Greenlandic surname, held by over 1,000 people. This is an unusual surname by Greenlander standards in that it is not a patronymic, but is instead an old Germanic religious name.
    • Larsen – The seventh most common Greenlandic surname, held by nearly 1,000 people and meaning ‘son of Lars’.
    • Møller – The eighth most common Greenlandic surname, held by nearly 1,000 people. This is an occupational surname and refers to a miller.
    • Pedersen – The ninth most common Greenlandic surname, held by approximately 800 people and meaning ‘son of Peder’ or ‘Peter’.
    • Berthelsen – The tenth most common Greenlandic surname, held by approximately 800 people and meaning ‘son of Bertel’.

    These ten surnames account for over 12,000 Greenlanders, more than 20% of the total population of Greenland, demonstrating the dominance of Scandinavian-style surnames here despite the large Inuit population.[5]

    Famos Greelanders

    Knud Rasmussen.
    • Knud Rasmussen – Often termed the ‘Father of Eskimology’, Rasmussen was an explorer and anthropologist who became the first person to lead an expedition by sleds pulled by dogs across the Northwest Passage from the North Atlantic to the Pacific in the early 1920s.[6]
    • Rasmus Lyberth – Arguably Greenland’s most successful musician, being well-known beyond Greenland itself in countries like Denmark.[7]
    • Hans Enoksen – The third Prime Minister of Greenland. He served in that office from 2002 to 2009.[8]
    • Nivi Pedersen – A Greenlandic filmmaker and actress known for starring in Season 4 of the HBO show True Detective.[9]

    See also

    Explore more about Greenlandic surnames

    References

    1. ↑ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/kalaallit-aqqi-gives-origins-history-of-greenlandic-inuit-names-1.3417142
    2. ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/eric-the-red
    3. ↑ Jorgen Taagholt, ‘The Early Exploration of Greenland’, in Earth Sciences History, Vol. 10, No. 2: Special Arctic Issue (1991), pp. 247–258.
    4. ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuit-disc-numbers
    5. ↑ https://forebears.io/greenland/surnames
    6. ↑ https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/blog/knud-rasmussen-a-northwest-passage-legend
    7. ↑ https://greenlandicpopularmusic.com/en/rasmus-lyberth-world-music-from-greenland/
    8. ↑ https://dbpedia.org/page/Hans_Enoksen
    9. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7308325/


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