The Art of Naming

Along with dozens of other names , Elsa comes from the name Elizabeth .  Of course, Elizabeth comes from the Greek form of the Hebrew name Elisheva. It means either "my God is an oath", "my God is abundance" or "pledged to God". Elizabeth has been extremely consistent in its popularity over the years, having always been in the Top 30 since 1880. The lovely German Elsa is also very consistent in its popularity since 1880 in the US. Since the release of the wildly successful movie Disney's Frozen in November 2013 featuring a Queen Elsa, the baby name Elsa is expected to leap up the charts in 2014.  Before Frozen, Elsa originally gained popularity as a name among English speakers because of Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin in 1848. Elsa was the name of the heroine in the opera. I chose to feature Elsa as part of Scandinavian week because, while it is mostly used in Germany, it also has usage in the Scandinavian countries, particularly Sw

This edition of World-Wide Wednesday focuses on the baby names of Scandinavia. This includes the three kingdoms of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. These three countries are also categorized as Nordic countries along with Finland, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe islands. There is plenty of overlapping influence between the countries that sometimes is translated into their baby names. Most baby name sites group all of these together as one overall "origin" called Scandinavian names. In general, surnames, or "heritable family names", weren't used often in Scandinavia until rather recently in comparison with some other countries. In Denmark, an act was passed in 1526 that made families of nobility have to begin using a heritable name. High class people followed suit during the next few centuries and finally everyone else did later. They followed a patronymic naming tradition that gave the father's name to the children with the suffix "-sen" added to t

Welcome to Scandinavian Week! You may have seen the polls that I made on the sidebar of the blog and maybe you even voted for your favorite Scandinavian names for each gender. After a tie-breaker, the winning male name was Magnus. Magnus is a Late Latin name meaning "Great" but it is heavily used by Scandinavians, particularly those from Sweden, Norway and Denmark.  It became popular in those countries because of the 11th century King Magnus I of Norway. It was said that King Magnus I may have been named after another ruler, Charlemagne, who was also known as Carolus Magnus, or Charles the Great.  Others who bore the name Magnus include a 7th century saint, 6 more kings of Norway, and 3 kings of Sweden. In the middle ages, the name Magnus gained usage in Scotland and Ireland. Manus is an Irish variant of the name. There's also the Finnish variants Manu, Mauno and Maunu, and the Danish Mogens. Interestingly, from Magnus sprang forth the Medieval English name M