On 8 Jan 2021 08:08:51 GMT
Jeremy Double wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:

It's just a cultural thing, like many Europeans have names like Magnus
Magnus*son*, and innumerable similar Slavic suffices.

In Iceland, the “son” or “dottir” name isn’t a surname, it’s a
patronymic.
It doesn’t follow down the generations like surnames do.

It must make doing family tree searches and census's fun. I wonder if its
a legal requirement? If someone named Smith moved there from the UK would
their son or daughter have to be smithson or smithdottir or could they just
be called smith?

Russians do something similar but sensibly the patronymic becomes a middle
name.