-son and -sen in Scandinavian names

A look at how some Scandinavian last names came to end in -sen (e.g. Andersen) and others in -son (e.g. Anderson, Andersson).

Logos by Elizabeth Porter (snowbringer at gmail).

[arnizach]

Here in the Faroe Islands we are kind of stuck between Denmark and Iceland. We have both -son and -sen. If someone's called -son they're using the old patrillineal form, whereas if they're called -sen they're using the newer, family name form. Funny thing, my name is Zachariassen and my brother's name is Zachariasson. He used to have the same name as me, but changed it. Our father was called Zacharias Zachariassen, so both of our last names work and literally mean the same thing, though mine is the family name while his is the patrillineal one.

[marlisetp]

Tusen takk for det. Jeg har saa mange ganger proeved aa forklare det for folk. Jeg? Estnisk, men foedt i NYC, bodde i Oslo nesten 8 aar, naa paa Aurora. (Har glemt meget!!! Det er for lenge siden.)

[superbooster]

This is one of those topics I have always wondered about, but never enough to actually take the time to search out the info for myself.

[smultronvisslan]

Fun to know: In swedish the names are spelled with two "s" because the first "s" indicate genitiv, like in english; the other s is the first letter in the word "son". So, Svensson simply means Sven's son. You find the same grammar in Svensdotter which means Sven's daughter.

[jackjohnson]

In the United States, it was sometimes up to how the name was transcribed when emigrating from Scandinavia. When my family began coming to the US from Denmark and Sweden in the late 1800s, our name was Johannesson. My patrilineal line became Johnson, but some of the siblings/cousins who emigrated became Johansson, Johansen, Jonson, Johnston, and Johnstone. We’ve since lost contact with those arms of the family.

[Bravehaldir]

This is the best Scandinavian/Nordic culture/history channel outside Europe in the whole world! Professor Jackson is phenomenal and his way of teaching goes beyond the walls of any university. Thank you so much for your generosity professor!

[jockeberg]

I recently got a son, and when the papers for the name we wanted to pick came in the mailbox, it actually said that we are allowed to give him my first name + a "son" suffix after as a surname. The same but " dotter", if we had gotten a daughter instead. So apparently you can still do the traditional surname in Sweden, it's just not that common anymore.

[arkemiffo]

Thanks for explaining this. I've always assumed that the patronymic endings were always referring to the word "son", and in Swedish it makes sense for a native speaker, but I never knew why it was -sen in Danish and (most) Norwegian.
When the issue has been discussed I've just kept to the standard Swedish answer "Dem Danes be crazy". :)

[Lajosen]

As a half swede half norwegian this has crossed my mind many times, thank you

[ganjafi]

I recently found out that my last name came from my great great grandfather, a Sami man named Andreas (His Christian name). He had no last name or at least no recorded last name and when he got children was the time when the laws in Norway changed to where everyone needed to have a family name. So he became Andreas Andreassen. I still have his last name even though it's so many generations ago.

Sen names are very common in Northern Norway since there where so many Sami people and Kven people who changed their name or adopted a sen name to appear Norwegian. Also because of the forced Norwegianisation from 1850's - 1970's.

In Norway Andreassen is just a common lame name, but in Australia where I live now, it's a cool name that no one can pronounce :D

[hennobrandsma]

Note that Dutch has many patronymic names in -sen as well (like Jansen/Janszen etc.), sometimes only the -s remains: Hendriks/Hendricks/Hendrix (based on time of spelling conventions chosen; many relic forms still exist).

[vatterholm]

The form is often pronounced "-o" or "-a" in central or Norwegian dialects. So someone named "Olav Persen" official in 1920 Norway would be talked about locally as "Ol' Persa".

[thogameskanaal]

In the Netherlands, we have Jansen/Janssen (which is the equivalent to English Johnson/Johnsson and nordic Jensen) but we also have Janszoon, which is a more archaic form, but it uses the modern-day Dutch word for son "zoon".

[StayInterested]

I have been binging your videos the past two days, I've always been interested in old norse and Asagudarna!

[greggkimball]

How about common British and American surnames ending in -son? For example, US Pres Andrew Jackson, Pres Andrew Johnson and Pres Lyndon Johnson weren't Swedish to the best of my knowledge.

[bevanderson]

As someone who does genealogy research in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden (and has ancestors from all three countries plus four others), the Norwegians and Danes used sen or datter for the suffix after the father's name. The Swedes used a sson or dotter suffix after the father's name. The suffix is often abbreviated to s (sen/sson) or d/dr/dtr (datter/dotter) in the records, and sometimes only the father's first name is listed and the reader is to assume the suffix should follow whether the minister wrote it out or not. The people of Iceland and the Faroe Islands still use the patronymic naming system today. [There are such things as matronymic names (mother's first name + sen/sson or datter/dotter), but they haven't cropped up in my family history.] In American Lutheran church records founded by Scandinavians from the late 19th-early 20th century, the column headers for birth/baptism, confirmation, marriage, death/burial records are listed. Their congregation membership records for entire families list the date and location of birth/baptism (and confirmation, if the person is old enough), as well as the year of immigration, so they are a good source of location of birth of Scandinavian ancestors. I actually prefer doing genealogy research in those countries because I don't lose women to name changes with marriage. Women kept their own names their entire lives.

The women didn't use sen/sson in their patronymic names until they got to America where they had to select a surname to fit in (greatest influx of Scandinavian immigrants was between 1880-1900, altho they started arriving a decade or so earlier). Sometimes their patronymic names ending in datter/dotter were changed to their father's first name + son, and sometimes they used their father's patronymic name as their American surname when they didn't use a location name as their American surname. If they used a location name, it might be their birth farm, one of the farms they lived on after they were born, or it might be the last place they lived before emigrating. One family I researched knew their Norwegian ancestor changed his name to an American name he liked on a whim, but they also knew his patronymic name and the port of embarkation so I didn't have to search too far to find those records in Norway (US census data shows he switched back and forth between his patronym and his chosen-on-a-whim new surname before the new name took hold).

My paternal grandfather had the patronymic name Andreasson at birth. In the first record of him and his brother in America the spelling had morphed into Anderson and stayed that way (ditto their maternal uncle who had emigrated before either of them did so).

Denmark started using the father's patronym by around the mid-19th century, but the ministers writing the birth/baptism records continued writing the proper patronyms for males and females for some time after that in some locations.

By law, Sweden started using permanent surnames in 1902, so the surname might be the patronymic name of the person as recorded at birth, or that person's father's patronymic name (depending on the HFL or census information listed)..., or it might be a location name like the farm where they were born, or the farm where they are currently living, or occasionally even an occupation name (altho occupation names are more often found in the United Kingdom).

By law, Norway started using permanent surnames in 1923, but some people started using permanent surnames (either a patronym or a location name) by about the 1900 (some even earlier if they lived in port cities; out in rural areas they were slower to change). That may have been the influence of relatives who had gone to America who had gone to using a single surname to fit in in their new country, or because they left for America within five years of the census. In one side lineage for a family in Wisconsin, the father's name was listed as it was in Norway, and the children all had their own patronymic names listed (the father's first name + sen or datter). By the time they moved to Minnesota when the offspring were adults (or nearly so), they were still using their patronymic names, although their offspring used what was their father's American surname by then (which was the patronymic name in the WI census record).

When the plague swept Europe in 1347/49, it killed off millions, and the noble families and royalty in Norway died. Altho it functioned independently, Norway was under the protection of Denmark thereafter. The people writing the records were often from Denmark, or had been sent to Denmark or Germany for their education, so one runs into Germanic spellings in some records, but the written language was heavily influenced by Denmark. By 1814 Denmark was losing land in the Napoleonic wars, so the Norwegians wrote their own constitution which was signed on 17 May 1814 (Syttende Mai ), and ceded themselves to Sweden's protection even though they still functioned as a separate country. Thereafter, the intelligentsia of Norway not only wanted to become completely independent again, they were worried about their language and wanted to "Norwegianize Norwegian" because they feared their language was being corrupted by Swedish (altho those two languages are mutually intelligible, and the written forms of all three languages is mutually intelligible, but spoken Danish is very guttural, difficult to speak and listen to). In 1905 Norway became an entirely separate country again (not just functioned separately as it had done since the 14th century). Because the language and customs of Norway were closer to Denmark, they chose the second son of the royal family in Denmark as their new king of Norway, and his descendants are the royal family in Norway today.

In any case, if someone with Scandinavian heritage decides to research their ancestors, the records are online (free in Norway and Denmark, for a fee in Sweden), the first thing one must thoroughly understand is the patronymic naming system and how it works, how the patronymic name changes with each generation in most cases. Then there's the matter of the phonetic spellings, the three extra vowels, and the letters of the alphabet that are used interchangeably (W/V, I/J/Y, K/Q, T/D), and certain Gothic spellings and letters in some cases.... I've been doing genealogy research for 55 years, so I'm familiar with various language quirks and penmanship in all three countries. :-)

[ddemaine]

I always enjoy your linguistic videos. This was something I'd often wondered, so thanks for addressing it.

[fartz]

The transformation to 'sen' also applies to Dutch names. Old Dutch was Janszoon (johnson) but became Jansen.

[floralkid]

I always wondered about whether names were still retained as the fathers name + son/sen or if there had been a switch to inherited names so this answers that question for me too!

[Jnow]

I found out I am mostly Scandinavian a few years back and have been pretty interested in Norse culture ever since! My maiden name is Anderson so when I looked up the origin of Anderson and this video came up first I got really excited!!