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.

So the son of Magnus Sveinnson could be Óðinn Magnusson and his daughter
SigrÃ*ður Magnusdottir.

I don’t see how that makes it less of a “surname�, as it is still a second
part to the name. What makes it different it it is not an inherited
surname, as was the Frankish and now near universal custom, or some other
sort of byname, another common alternative at one time.

Robin