The Family Name

Lars Jonsson begat Daniel Larsson begat Daniel Danielson begat Per Danielson .... begat Frans Persson begat ...

I stem from stout Scandinavian stock, Swedish & Norwegian immigrants. My immigrant grandparents were Nelson, Johnson, Pearson ... and Hoplin. What? Where did that come from?

Many Scandinavian family names were originally patronymics consisting of the father's personal name with the ending '-sson'. Place names are also quite common (endings such as -berg, -strom, -stedt). This is why Scandinavian genealogy is such a nightmare. Every generation can have a different name.

A patronymic name (pater=father, lat.) is a name constructed from the father name. In Norway, the name Ole is very common, 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 Hansson". His sister Marta would be Marta Hansdotter or "datter" or "dtr" as a suffix for females. In some sources the male suffix "sen" or "son" used also for females, often seen in passenger lists. 

However, there might be several people in a village with the name of "Ole Hansson", so it was common to add the farm name for closer identification. e.g. "Ole Hansson Solem",  his full name from being christened "Ole" and his father’s name "Hans", and living on the "Solem" farm. In this way the names tell quite a bit about a person. But it is another complication for genealogists because people moved around. When a person moved from one farm to another, he would be known by the name of the farm he moved to. So if Ole Hansson Solem had moved to another farm, he would have become Ole Hansson Berg, or Dahl or whatever name the farm had. Some people moved many times during a lifetime, and will thus be known by many different names.

Many of farm names are very old, dating back to the bronze age, and they have a meaning. They are often descriptive of the landscape. Solem, Solum or Solheim describes a farm on a place with a lot of sun. The prefix is "Sol" (sun) and suffix "heim" (home). "Dahl" is valley. Moen is moor. Braaten is slope. Vik is bay or cove.  

[Editor note:  For a short list of the most common Norwegian surname=farm name, see
http://www.sigdalslag.org/PDF/NorwegianFarmNameMeanings.pdf   

For the ultra curious, see the Oluf Rygh database of Norwegian Farm Names at the "Dokumentasjonsprosjektet" web site. http://www.dokpro.uio.no/rygh_ng/rygh_form.html ]

[Editor Note: The name Nesjo, which appears frequently in the Hoplin ancestor lists, is an example of this. From the Rygh website above the Nesjo is farm # 71.

Nesjo. Udt. næ2ssjó. -- Nedesiø NRJ. II 196. Neßiø 1559. Neße 1610. Næßioe 1664. Nessiøe 1723.
Forklares af O. R. i Thj. VSS. 1891 S. 217 som sms. med sjór m., Sø, hvoraf -sjo i
Udtalen kan ansees for en forstenet Form. lste Led kan mulig være det Nit-, der findes som Stamme i flere Elvenavne. Den lille Elv, som gaar gjennem det Vand, ved hvilket Gaarden ligger, maa da have havt et af denne Stamme dannet Navn. Gaardnavnet tilhører da opr. Vandet og har intet med Ordet nes at gjøre.]
[Editor note:  Send me your translation!]

It gets more complicated. When a couple was married and had children, the custom was:

     First son: named after paternal grandfather
     First daughter: named after paternal grandmother
     Second son: named after maternal grandfather
     Second daughter: named after maternal grandmother

UNLESS, when a man married a woman and took over her father's farm, then usually the first born son was named after the maternal grandfather. 

OR, when one of the spouses died, and the widow/widower remarried. The first born child of the same sex as the deceased was named after him or her. 

OR, if a child died, the next born child of the same sex was usually named after the deceased child.  

{Editor note: So this is why my grandfather was named Ole. He was the first male offspring of Nils and Hannah after the death of of 5 year old Ole N. Hoplin in 1888, and according to custom was named for the deceased child}


Still with me?

The name Ole

My paternal grandfather's name was was Ole .

"Ole" is actually a Danish form of the Norwegian "Olav" or "Olafr", which is an old Norse name. The oldest known form is "Anulaibar", constructed of the prefix "anu" which means "ancestor", and the suffix "laibar" which means "descendant" or "heir". i.e. "ancestor's-descendant".  The most generic name derivation ever but a dearth of information for a genealogist. You probably don't want to discover an ancestor by the name of "Ole Olsen" if you do not have any other information. Dead end. In Norwegian, the Ole is pronounced "Olah" rather than the Americanized "Olee".  To bad we didn't stick with the original pronunciation. It might have eliminated a lot of bad jokes.  

The Hoplin Name

My great grandfather Nils' father was Olaus Jonson Risan where "Risan" was farm #29 in North Trondelag where he labored. So probably, my great grandfather's given name was Nils Olausson. Therefore, my grandfather should have been Ole Nilsson, my father Glenn Oleson and me: David Glennson.  But when Nils immigrated he took a name from the area near the Hopla Fjord above Trondheim, an offshoot of the Asen Fjord. There was  sawmill on the Hopla fjord named “Hopla Mill” and he might have worked there. So where did "Hoplin" come from. Nil’s citizenship papers show Nils O. Hopland”, and how it transmogrified into Hoplin, I do not know. Perhaps a census entry error?  I've often wished the name would have remained Hopland - or Olausson. Life would be easier.  And, while we're at it, was it Nils or Nels?

A further complication is the frequent Americanization of names, sometimes accidentally. 

Here's a typical census taker tale from the early 1900's.

Census taker: “What’s your name?”
—Anders Olafsen
“Okay” (as he writes Andrew Olson on the census form) “And your wife?”
—Mette Evensdatter
“Right” (and he writes Martha Evanston on the census form)


But sometimes a rename was intentional.  Persson becomes Pearson. Jonsson becomes Johnson ...   When my maternal grandfather's brother got tired of the mailman mixing up all the Pearsons along that Iowa county road, he changed the family name to Nyren, which was supposed to indicate "new line".

And perhaps you know the bad Ellis Island joke about how a Swedish immigrant got the name "Sam Ting"?

Hopla Mill - 1917 

Copyright © 2016 Dave Hoplin