The Name Committee has approved a new batch of names that Icelanders can now legally give their children.
Vísir reports that six first names and one middle name have been approved. Parents can now additionally name their female children Eldþóra, Angelía, Selena and Lilly, and male children can now also be named Brímir and Rex.
Rex, while known primarily as a man’s name in much of the English-speaking world, holds a special connotation for Icelanders. The television show Kommissar Rex, which tells the story of the eponymous German shepherd police dog and his cop friend, was very popular in Iceland for a number of years.
The middle name Skjöld was also approved.
The Name Committee approves or rejects names based on two criteria: whether the name has been used before in Icelandic history, and whether the name can be declined in accordance with Icelandic grammar.
The committee has not been without its detractors, however, who see the institution as obsolete and unnecessary. Amongst its harshest critics is former Reykjavík mayor Jón Gnarr, who still cannot legally call himself by the name the general public has known him for decades. The committee also gained international attention when they denied a 10-year-old girl a passport on the grounds that her name was foreign.
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