Norwegian Surnames in America
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Surnames During the Immigration Period
From 1825, the year of the first organized Norwegian immigration to the USA on the sloop Restauration, until the beginning of the next century, about 900,000 Norwegians immigrated to America. For the majority of them, the destination was the USA. During the 1800s , most Norwegians did not have a set surname. They had a given name (Anna, Knut), which was their actual name, and a patronymic, which consisted of the father’s name and the suffix son/sen (English son) as in Knut Andersen or dotter/datter (English daughter) as in Anna Larsdatter. This name provided information as to whose daughter or son the person was. If the individual lived on a farm, the name of the farm was added to the two previous names, more like an address than a surname. In an official document the name might look like this: Anna Larsdatter Helland, i.e. Anna is the daughter of Lars and lives on the farm Helland.
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Among the gentry during the 1800s, it had become customary to have a set surname. Gradually, society was becoming more organized with a growing bureaucracy, which put demands on a more dependable system for identifying its citizens, but it wasn’t until 1923 that the Norwegian Parliament, Stortinget, passed a law requiring all Norwegians to take a set surname or family name. By this time, the main immigration period from Norway to America had ended. When emigrants were registered on departure from Norway, and on their entry into America, they needed to have a surname, so immigrants had needed to choose one. The choice of name could vary a great deal within a family, and it could also be changed during the first decades in the new country.
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Name Choices
In 1850 Tron Jacobsen and his wife Henrikke Henriksdatter and their five children, who lived on a farm named Buringrud, packed up their belongings and immigrated to Iowa. They had been living on Buringrud farm for about seven years. When they settled in America, they took the name Jacobson from Tron’s patronymic Jacobsen. All of their children used Jacobson as a surname, but one of their grandchildren, Theodore Samuel Buringrud, took back the farm name and passed it on to his children.
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In 1861 Marta Osmundsdatter and Hans Jonesen and their five children left the small farm named Kløv at Helland to start a new life in America. They had lived at Kløv for only nine years. When choosing a surname to use in the New Country, they landed on Helland, since they this was the area where they had lived, rather than Johnson (from Jonesen), which choice would have given them a very common surname in the USA. But the descendants of Synneva Knutsdatter and Jone Hadlesen, who left the area with their three children the same year, took the patronymic Johnson in America, based on the name of their father Jone.
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In 1862 another family left the small farm Træ (Hellandstrædet) at Helland after having lived there for fifteen years: Siri Oddsdatter and Ola Paulsen with their six children. Ola had come to Helland from the Guggedal farm further up the valley. It is interesting that Ola chose the name Guggedal when he settled in America, a name that is almost unpronounceable in English. Guggedal was adapted to Gudgdal, but his sons chose the patronymic Olson/Oleson, based on the name of their father. In this family we thus find people using the farm name and the patronymic in two spelling variations.
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During the 1880s the siblings Lena, Nils, and Tormod emigrated from Helland, where they had lived for a few years on the farm where their mother Ambjørg Tormodsdatter grew up. Their father, Samson Nilsen, joined them in America in 1898. Samson was born on the Slogvik farm, and when he emigrated, he was working at the coppar mines at Karmøy. All of these family members took the name Helland, even though their connection to this farm was rather remote.
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Farm Names
These examples illustrate several typical features of Norwegian immigrant names found in the USA. Many immigrants chose as a surname the name of the farm they had left (Helland), even though they might not have lived there more than a few years. Thus, they followed the same pattern as most Norwegians back home: the surnames of a little less than 70% of all Norwegians come from a farm name. Other immigrants chose a patronymic based on the name of their father, such as Johnson (from Jon), Nelson (from Nils), Olson (from Ola, Ole, or Olav). An example of how an immigrant might choose a name can be found in a passage from The Fargo Forum about Bjug Harstad from Valle in Setesdal:
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Harstad walked the 25 miles to enroll. While at Luther College, President Lauritz Larsen asked Harstad his name. "Bjug Aanondson," he replied. "But what farm did you come from in Norway?" queried Larsen. He answered, "Harstad," and from then on his name was Bjug Harstad.
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When asked about his name, Bjug gave his first name, which is his “real” name, and the patronymic, which tells the name of his father. He did not have a set surname at this time.
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Norwegian farm names used as surnames have a built-in advantage for genealogists, as they contain specific geographical features. As is the case with the name Helland, some farm names will be found a good many places in Norway. But in other cases, there is only one place in Norway where you will find certain names. This is the case with Buringrud, Fisketjøn (Fisketjon), Guggedal (Gudgdal), Hagland, Mundal (Mondale), Rokne (Rockne), and Tufteskog. All of these farm names are in use as American surnames.
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Tightly Knit Rural Communities
After Ireland, Norway is the country that sent the largest percentage of its population to America, and Norwegians were the largest group of immigrants that settled as farmers in the New Country. They settled in core agricultural states in the Midwest: North Dakota (30% of the population claim Norwegian roots), Minnesota (17.3%), South Dakota (15.3%), Wisconsin (8.5%), and Iowa (5.5%). More recent immigration accounts for the fact that Montana moved up to fourth place in the 2000 Census, with 10.6% of its citizens claiming Norwegian heritage. In Canada there are also significant Norwegian Canadian populations: Saskatchewan (7.6%), Alberta (4.9%), British Columbia (3.6%), and Manitoba (4.2%).
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In these states communities were established that could be termed rural ghettos of Norwegian immigrants. They organized Norwegian Lutheran churches, where services were held in Norwegian and youngsters were instructed in Norwegian in order to prepare them for confirmation. These communities were interconnected through the Norwegian language press, consisting of 280 newspapers and magazines. Reading circles encouraged people to read Norwegian novels in the original, drama groups performed plays in Norwegian, and a good many novels and non-fiction books were published in Norwegian. In many of these micro societies, people from the same valley or rural area in Norway made up the majority of the population, and an “unpronounceable” Norwegian farm name would therefore not present a problem, since people rarely ventured into the English speaking American macro society. This is probably the most important reason that many surnames of this type have survived in America in their original form, rather than being adapted, changed, or exchanged for an English one.