Return to Norwegian Naming Patterns
Norway Farm Names
by Johan I. Borgos
Many Americans have a Norwegian farm name as their surname. You will find
the reason for this if you look at the page about Norway Naming Patterns.
Farm names are important clues for the genealogist, but they also carry
lots of interesting cultural history with them.
First some information about Norwegian farm structure: In earlier centuries
most of the Norwegians lived on farms, and each farm had a name. A few
hundred years ago all the farms were listed in a land register ('matrikkel'
in Norwegian) and given a number. Each rural district ('kommune' or 'herred'
in Norwegian) had it's own list, where the farms were numbered from 1 and
upwards.
The numbering and the spelling of the farm name may have changed with revisions
of the land registers, but with only minor exceptions the farms were the
same units. The numbers are called 'gårdnummer' in Norwegian, often
abbreviated to 'gnr.'. Farms that were listed in these old registers are
called 'matrikkelgårder', in English I will call them 'main farms'.
Originally there may have been only one family on each main farm, but as
the population increased, the land had to be divided between many families.
Each holding is called a 'bruk' in Norwegian, and just before 1900 the
authorities had to create a secondary numbering ('bruksnummer' or only 'bnr.') for these holdings. If a main farm were divided into five parts,
they got the numbers from 1 to 5. 'Gnr. 7, bnr. 4' consequently means 'holding
number 4 on main farm number 7'. In addition, the holding got a name.
On many main farms, there were cotter's holdings. The cotters used land
belonging to the numbered holdings, therefore their small places didn't
get their own number. As a rule they had a name, but it could easily change.
The farm names that maid the transition into family names as a rule once
belonged to a main farm, but many numbered holdings and some cotter's holdings
also have produced surnames.
Now some words about the main farm names. Some of them are very old, perhaps
1500 years or more. The great majority are more than 200 years old. The
spelling may have changed quite a bit through the centuries, and even more
after crossing the Atlantic as a surname.
Farm names usually describe the farm in certain ways. The oldest are either
short 'nature words' or names ending with -stad, -set, -heim/-um, -land
or -tveit/-tvedt. They are probably more than a thousand years old, the
farms they belonged to were big and could feed many people in earlier history.
As a rule you will find the oldest names at the most central farms in an
area.
Some farm names have expanded and are used as names for wider territories
today. If the local church were build on a farm called Sortland, then both
the church and its parish got the same name. Later on this place could
grow to be a little city, covering also the neighboring farms, and the
city would be called Sortland.
If you are interested in Norway's farm names and want to know more about
their meaning, then you should read 'Norske gaardnavne' (Norwegian Farm
names), written by the brothers O. and K. Rygh a hundred years ago. It
is an encyclopedia in 18 volumes, one for each of the counties ('fylke'),
covering every main farm name in Norway.
Source: www.netins.net/showcase/tommiles/johan1.html
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