The Icelandic Naming Committee
(;
[ pronounced )—also known in English as the Personal Names Committee]—maintains an official register of approved Icelandic given names and governs the introduction of new given names into Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
ic culture.
Composition and mission
The Naming Committee was established in 1991[ to determine whether new given names not previously used in Iceland are suitable for integration into the country's ]language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
and culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
. The committee comprises three appointees who serve for four years, appointed by the Minister of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice, is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
—one to be nominated by the Icelandic language council within the Icelandic Language Committee, one by the faculty of philosophy of the University of Iceland
The University of Iceland ( ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern co ...
, and one by the university's faculty of law.
A name not already on the official list of approved names must be submitted to the naming committee for approval. A new name is considered for its compatibility with Icelandic tradition[ and for the likelihood that it might cause the bearer embarrassment.][ Under Article 5 of the Personal Names Act,][ names must be compatible with ]Icelandic grammar
Icelandic grammar is the set of structural rules that describe the use of the Icelandic language.
Icelandic is a heavily inflected language. Icelandic nouns are assigned to one of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, or neuter), an ...
(in which all nouns, including proper names, have grammatical gender
In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...
and change their forms in an orderly fashion according to the language's case system
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nominal ...
). Names must also contain only letters occurring in the Icelandic alphabet, and with only occasional exceptions, a name's grammatical gender previously had to match the sex of the person bearing the name.
Foreigners and their children are allowed to keep their own names and loanwords from other languages are permitted. Loanwords must have other name bearers in the country and follow the grammar of the original language or have adjusted grammar for the Icelandic language.
In 2019, the Icelandic parliament passed the Gender Autonomy Act (), guaranteeing transgender
A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth.
The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...
and intersex
Intersex people are those born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binar ...
individuals' right to gender self-identification
Gender self-identification or gender self-determination is the concept that a person's legal sex or gender is determined by their gender identity, without medical or judicial requirements.
It is a major goal of the transgender rights movement. Ad ...
, including the recognition of non-binary gender
Non-binary or genderqueer gender identities are those that are outside the male/female gender binary. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gender that is differ ...
in law. To this effect, given names were no longer restricted by gender. Moreover, Icelanders who are officially registered as non-binary will be permitted to use the gender-neutral
Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, Gender-neutral language, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) ...
suffix ("child") instead of or .
, the Personal Names Register () contained 1,712 male names and 1,853 female names.
Controversies
Jón Gnarr
Jón Gnarr
Jón Gnarr (; born Jón Gunnar Kristinsson on 2 January 1967) is an Icelanders, Icelandic actor, comedian, and politician who served as the Mayor of Reykjavík, Mayor of Reykjavík from 2010 to 2014. He is currently a member of the Althing for ...
, former mayor of Reykjavík, protested the committee's denial of his request to legally drop "Kristinsson" from his name despite his desire to disassociate himself from his father. Gnarr pointed out that if Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (; ; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of th ...
moved to Iceland, as a foreigner he would be allowed to keep that non-conforming name, but that native Icelanders were not allowed to have non-conforming names. He was also unable to legally name his daughter "Camilla" after her grandmother; it was instead spelled "Kamilla" because C is not part of the Icelandic alphabet. Jón was allowed to legally change his name in 2015; however, Gnarr, the surname adopted by him and his children in 2005, was only recognized by the courts in 2018; it was legally considered a middle name before then.
Blær Bjarkardóttir Rúnarsdóttir
The committee refused to allow Blær Bjarkardóttir Rúnarsdóttir (born 1997) to be registered under the name given to her as a baby, on the grounds that the masculine noun ("gentle breeze" in Icelandic) could be used only as a man's name. Blær—identified in official records as ("girl" in Icelandic)—and her mother, Björk Eiðsdóttir, challenged the committee's decision in court, arguing that had been used by Nobel Prize–winning Icelandic author Halldór Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness (; born Halldór Guðjónsson; 23 April 1902 – 8 February 1998) was an Icelandic writer and winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote novels, poetry, newspaper articles, essays, plays, travelogues and sh ...
as the name of a female character in his 1957 novel '' The Fish Can Sing'' (). One other woman in Iceland was already registered at the time with the name Blær, and two declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and det ...
s—one masculine and one feminine—exist for the name.
On 31 January 2013, the Reykjavík district court ruled in the family's favour and overruled the naming committee, finding that could in fact be both a man's and a woman's name and rejecting government claims that it was necessary to deny her request in order to protect the Icelandic language. After the court's decision, Iceland's interior minister confirmed that the government would accept the ruling and would not appeal the case to the country's Supreme Court
In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
. The chair of the naming committee, as well as a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior
An interior ministry or ministry of the interior (also called ministry of home affairs or ministry of internal affairs) is a government department that is responsible for domestic policy, public security and law enforcement.
In some states, the ...
, said the ruling in Blær's case could prompt the government to revisit the current laws on personal names.
Duncan and Harriet Cardew
The committee refused to accept the names of Duncan and Harriet Cardew—Icelandic-born children of a British father and an Icelandic mother—because their names did not meet the criteria for being added to the registry of approved names. The children had originally used passports with the substitute names ''Drengur'' (boy) and ''Stúlka'' (girl); however, in 2014, Icelandic authorities refused to renew Harriet's passport at all without a legally acceptable name. Since the Cardews were about to travel to France, they obtained emergency British passports for Duncan and Harriet; the parents also announced they would file a formal complaint objecting to the naming committee's rejection of their children's names and the passport office's refusal to renew their Icelandic passports. The Cardews announced in June 2016 that they had won their case and their children's names would be recognised.
References
Further reading
*
transcript
External links
List of names accepted and rejected by the Mannanafnanefnd
at Island.is
Mannanafnanefnd application form
at Domsmalaraduneyti.is
Larissa Kyzer: What’s in a Name?
(article in English mentioning recent approvals and denials)
{{Icelandic language
!Mannanafnanefnd
Icelandic language
Linguistic purism in Icelandic
Naming controversies
Culture of Iceland
Government agencies established in 1991
1991 establishments in Iceland