I would like to teach you a little about how Norwegians have named their children throughout the ages. The following is only part of the story, so don’t try to follow it too closely. In some cases, you may need a PhD in Norwegian names to understand it or to investigate someone’s family tree.
A patronymic name is a name constructed from the father’s name. Now, we all know there were quite a lot of people by the name of Ole, and therefore it was necessary to identify people by something more than just their given name. So, if Ole's father was "Hans", he would be "Ole Hansen". The patronymic is in general the father’s name as a prefix, and "sen", "son" or "søn" as a suffix for males, and "datter" or "dotter" as a suffix for females. In some sources we find the male suffix "sen" or "son" used also for females.
There are variations on how the names were constructed, like you should actually expect that the son of Ole would be (Ole's-son) - "Olessen", but it is usually constructed as a short form "Olsen".
From Johannes we see variations like "Johannessen" and "Johannesen", the same goes for "Niels" (or "Nils"), which becomes "Nielssen" (with all variations of the suffix - sen, son or søn).
When a couple was married and had children, the custom was that the first born son was named after his paternal grandfather, with the exception of when a man married a woman and took over her father's farm, then we usually see the first born son named after the maternal grandfather. The second born son would usually be named after his maternal grandfather. The first born daughter was usually named after her paternal grandmother, and the second born daughter after her maternal grandmother. There were some other exceptions, when one of the spouses died, and the remaining remarried. The first born child of the same sex as the deceased was named after him or her. Also, if one of the parents of an unborn child died prior to the child being baptized, one would name a child of the same sex as the deceased, after him or her. If a child died, the next born child of the same sex was usually named after the deceased child.
As there could be several people in a village by the name of "Ole Olsen", it was common to add the farm name for closer identification. "Johannes Olsen Solem" got his full name because his parents christened him "Johannes" and his fathers name was "Ole", and they lived on the "Solem" farm. In this way the names told quite a bit about a person. You would not think this would cause a problem, but actually it could, as people moved quite a bit. When a person moved from one farm to another, he would be known by the name of the farm he moved to. So if Johannes Olsen Solem had moved to another farm, he would have become Johannes Olsen Berg, or Dahl or whatever name the farm had. Some people moved many times during a lifetime, and would thus be known by many different names.
As pointed out earlier, people started to keep the farm name as a surname even after moving from the farm, like Johannes. His wife also used the "Solem" name after their marriage in 1833. Towards the end of the century it became more common to use last names like that, and we even see that people started to use patronymic names as last names. The wife then took her husband’s patronymic as her last name by marriage, and their children would also use the fathers patronymic. In some families we see some children using a patronymic in the traditional way, while other siblings used the fathers patronymic as a surname. As you can see, this could be very confusing.
In 1923 a law was passed, which made it compulsory for every person to have a fixed family name. Many families then froze the patronymic or the farm name as their family name.
When a couple was married and had children, the custom was that the first born son was named after his paternal grandfather. However, if a man married a woman and took over her father's farm, then we would usually see the first born son named after the maternal grandfather. The second born son would usually be named after his maternal grandfather. The first born daughter was usually named after her paternal grandmother, and the second born daughter after her maternal grandmother. There were some other exceptions, when one of the spouses died, and the remaining remarried. The first born child of the same sex as the deceased was named after him or her. Also, if one of the parents of an unborn child died prior to the child being baptized, one would name a child of the same sex as the deceased, after him or her. If a child died, the next born child of the same sex was usually named after the deceased child.
This paper was presented at the 2008 Santa Lucia festival by Corina Edgington