28 December 2013

Little Bear

Despite my temerity in calling myself 'Viqueen', I do not take a great interest in the doings of royals, of either the monarchical or the Hollywood variety. However, it did not escape my notice that megastar Kate Winslet has recently had a little boy whom she has graced with the name 'Bear'. In the media, this is presented as 'the latest in a long line of celebrities to give their child an unusual name'. I agree that celebrity baby names are often quite hair-raising (and not only baby names, for mercifully young Bear will be spared his father's surname of RocknRoll). But on this occasion, the journos have not done their homework. As all readers of this blog will know, Björn was one of the most popular boy's names in the Viking Age. Lena Peterson's invaluable study of Scandinavian personal names in runic inscriptions (Nordiskt runnamnslexikon) is our best source for actual Viking Age naming practices. Her frequency tables show that Björn is the second-most popular male name in this material, topped only by Sveinn. The latter is probably due to the fact that there are many more inscriptions from the east Scandinavian area where this name was popular, whereas Björn was more widely used across the whole Scandinavian world. The popularity of Björn is also indicated by its second place in the frequency table of deuterothemes, that is the second element in compound names like Þorbjörn. In this frequency table, it is pipped to the post by -ulfr 'wolf', the monothematic version of which is no. 4 in the frequency table of most popular names.

One can only speculate as to why Vikings like to call their boy-children 'Bear' and 'Wolf', though it isn't too difficult to imagine. There don't appear to be any (certainly not any common) female names which are animal-words, and we may note that neither bears nor wolves are particularly nice animals. (Vikings did not call their children 'Sheep'). But they had lots of cool names, and let us hope that more Hollywood stars and other celebrities will study Lena's name-lists for some nice Viking names, rather than choosing to name their children after boroughs of New York, or fruit. And one day, they might even have a nice rune-stone, like the one pictured, for a certain Ulfr.

6 comments:

  1. And those names are still in use in modern Scandinavia. Among my friends are the names Ulf, Uffe, Bjørn, Asbjørn, Svend, Sven and likewise they appear as lastnames like Wulf, Wulff, Wolff, Thorsen and so forth. Less common and somewhat more curious is the name Odin (especially as Odin does not seem to ever have been used as a person's name; pace Odinkar) - and these are just names from Denmark.

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    1. True enough, Greis! But do see a recent post for some comments on contemporary trends in Scandinavian naming: http://norseandviking.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/from-another-place-i-take-my-name.html
      Last names, of course, generally have different meanings.

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  2. NorseLass25/1/14 09:23

    There is nothing wrong with being called 'bear' - better than nicknames like bunny or the German 'little mouse' (Mausi) or French 'flea'.

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  3. I think they are both lovely animals! One should not judge an animal on how useful or dangerous it is to humans; that isn't what it is for.

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    1. I suspect that by suggesting that 'neither bears nor wolves are particularly nice animals', the author is implying that they are rather more likely than the average mammal to eat one's face off.

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  4. My nephews name is Frode. Which means something like ''wise and clever''

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