Old Norwegian - Datter or Dottir?

+6 votes
3.2k views
For old Norwegians, I often find that there are two spellings for the daughter of  "Erling" or some other such name.   I know that Erlingsson is incorrect for a daughter, but has a decision been made as to whether to merge to datter or dottir?  Dottir is probably correct for the time period, but datter is the commonly used name, and many times there isn't a "dottir" to merge into.

For consistency, I think this is a program/policy decision that should be made and followed, but I'm not the one to make that call.
WikiTree profile: Erling Sole
in Policy and Style by Vic Watt G2G6 Pilot (355k points)
retagged by Living Sälgö

5 Answers

+4 votes
 
Best answer
I havn't looked at the profile Vic - just adding thei url in passing as I know Sheri uses it as a guide and posts on many of our norse profiles

http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Surnames#Patronyms.2FMatronyms

Wendy
by Wendy Hampton G2G6 Mach 2 (24.8k points)
selected by Vic Watt

On the profile Vic has posted this link. The list is good, but not definite.

As I wrote in my answer there are lots of different way of writing. Like in Norway today we have 2 official languages. In what we call the new-norwegian it is officially -dotter and in norwegian it is -datter. This is today. Before it was several more ways of writing -datter.

+2 votes
Be careful with this because in Iceland they still use the patronymic (and in some cases matronymic) conventions...and there are scores of them living (and dying, of course) in other countries...
by Curious x G2G Crew (780 points)
+6 votes
In norwegian and in danish it will be Erlingsdatter

In icelandic it will be Erlingsdottir

In swedish it will be Erlingsdotter
by anonymous G2G Crew (380 points)
+3 votes
There is several ways to write in Norwegian. It very often depended on the priest or his helper how they spelled it. Today it is written -datter. Before it could be -dater -doter -dotter -dtr -d - dotir -dottir and also nothing like only "Erling". As it is said before -dottir is the common in Iceland, and in Sweden the common will be -dotter and Danish is like Norwegian -datter.

The same person could write the name in all these different ways. Often they couldn't write themselves and other people wrote for them and in different ways. As I see it as a Norwegian you can merge them all as long as all the other dates are correct.
by Living Denstad G2G1 (1.2k points)
+3 votes
Hi Erling! Correct is »datter« as it is in Denmark,  Norway was in fact a part of a union with Denmark, until it got its own constitution i 1814. Thereafter Norway was annected by Sweden until 1904 when Norway became independent.
by Living Kølle G2G6 Mach 4 (48.9k points)
It is actually a question of time and place. The Danish version is datter. This is also used in one of the official versions of modern Norwegian. It is not uncommon to use the alternative dotter, which is common in many dialects and also in the dialect-based version of official Norwegian.

If we go back before the 1600's, the current Icelandic usage is also commonplace in Norway.

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