Home

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

All about Bryce








There is an official government list of acceptable Norwegian names. A law from the 1800s is intended to protect children from any Norwegian names that sound or look strange. - Babynames.org

Bryce is not an acceptable Norwegian name by law. Indeed, it does look and sound strange. In order to avoid difficulties my parents referred to me in public as "Busby." When a family member calls me Bryce I don't know to whom they are referring. Patronomic last names result in lot of people with the same last name because of the limited number of legal first names. For instance one's grandfather Gunnar might have a grandchild name Gunnarsen. There are a lot of Gunnarsens. This confusion was somewhat solved by people adding the name of their farm to the end. So my official name is Bryce (Busby) Gunnarsen Digdug.


Distribution of Digdug families in the United States:

4 comments:

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Thief, as you may know, is the most common Jewish name in Quebec. There is a high percentage (over 33%) of people named Thief or Gypsy in Spokane, apparently the highest percentage in North America. (P.S., Bow says Happy Kwanzaa atcha.)

Bryce Digdug said...

Happy Kwanzaa to Bow. I'm spending the next couple of days under the covers recovering from this cough.

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Sorry you're under the weather. In "this economy" I should "outsource" Bow as a bed warmer. Happy holiday all the same.

Salty Miss Jill said...

Does this mean Busby Berkley is Norwegian, too?