You Can Now Have The Name ‘Kaos’ In Iceland

Iceland’s Naming Committee—which judges, and then accepts or rejects new names in the Icelandic lexicon—has approved and denied another round of submitted names, Fréttablaðið reports.

While there are no longer gender restrictions for names—that is, Icelanders of any gender can carry any name that the Naming Committee approves, whereas previously, the committee expressly approved names only for Icelanders of a particular gender—the committee still judges potential new names based on whether they are in harmony with Icelandic grammar rules.

As such, the Naming Committee has now approved the names Kaos, Ingaló, Sanný, Róma, Bertmarí, Hrafnrún, Estíva, Gulla, Venedía, Lucas, Soren, Kuggi, Theo, and Sólarr.

This last name is an interesting case, because the Naming Committee determined that this name is not in harmony with modern Icelandic grammar rules. The -rr fell out of use in the 14th century, with most words using it shortened to a single -r ending. However, there are some modern Icelandic words which still use it—such as kjarr and kurr—and the name Sólarr itself can be found in the Eddas, which adds to the name’s cultural place in Icelandic.

Thanks to the 2019 gender determination act, names in Iceland are no longer restricted to specific genders—even if, grammatically speaking, some names are inherently gendered given the nature of the language. Names such as Gerður and Auður, for example, are in a grammar sense masculine, but have traditionally been names only allowed for female Icelanders. The 2019 law changed that, and now Icelanders have no gender restrictions as to what names they may give themselves.

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