Viking name generator

Most Norse names, like other Germanic names, joined two words: Thorstein is Thor and stone, Gunnhild is two words for battle. The two parts had separate meanings and were not read as a phrase, and the second part showed whether the name was a man's or a woman's. Some names had one part only, like Leif, heir, or Ulf, wolf.

Names ran in families. According to the Viking Answer Lady, parents usually named a child after a dead relative, believing the name carried something of that person, and often reused just one element or the first sound: a grandson of Thorfinn could be Thorvald. Names with the god Thor were recorded more than any others. Here are the elements the generator and the builder use:

Vikings had no family surnames. Most people were known by their father's name with -son or -dóttir added, so Þorkell, son of Þórðr, was Þorkell Þórðarson. The father's name takes its genitive form, and that is where most invented Viking names go wrong: Sigurd gives Sigurdarson, not Sigurdsson. Naming a child after the mother was very rare; the Viking Answer Lady counts only 34 Icelandic women whose sons were named for them.

Iceland still names people this way. A brother and sister are Ólafur Jónsson and Sigríður Jónsdóttir, and since 2019 people registered as neither male nor female can use -bur, child. New first names need the approval of the Naming Committee, set up in 1991, whose register held about 4,300 names in 2023; a child must be named within six months, with no more than three names. Elsewhere in Scandinavia, patronymics turned into fixed family names such as Hansen and Andersson around 1900.

With so many men named Thorstein, a byname told them apart. Bynames described looks, habits, temperament, work, origin or a life story, and they were often unflattering, so they were rarely used by the person themselves. Landnámabók is full of them, from skalli, bald-pate, to lafskegg, dangle-beard. Many famous Vikings are better known by theirs:

Bynames were carved in stone too. From Lindorm Eriksson's study of runic bynames, a few with the stones that carry them: víkingr, the viking (Sm 10, probably to tell one Tóki from others nearby); skald, poet (U 29); stýrimaðr, ship's captain (U 1011); smiðr, smith (DR 58); hinn málspaki, the eloquent (U 1146); hinn góði, the good (DR 55). Set Style to With a real Viking byname for names that carry one of these, with its meaning and source.

The best count comes from Landnámabók, Iceland's Book of Settlements, written down in the 12th and 13th centuries. Geirr Bassi Haraldsson counted every name in it, and Sara L. Uckelman sorted them by frequency. Ten of the 14 most common men's names begin with Thor-. These are Icelandic settlers, so treat the list as a guide to the Norse world rather than all of it; no comparable count has been published for the runestones.

Old Norse is usually written with two extra letters: þ, the th in thin, and ð, the th in this. An accent marks a long vowel, and many men's names end in -r, the ending of the subject case. To anglicize a name, write þ as th and ð as th or d, drop the accents, and drop the -r: Haraldr becomes Harald, Eiríkr becomes Eirik, and Þorsteinn becomes Thorstein. The generator uses English spelling; the builder accepts either.

Vikings wrote with the Younger Futhark, cut down from 24 runes to 16 by the late 8th century. Long-branch runes were used mostly on stone and short-twig runes for everyday writing on wood. With only 16 letters, one rune stood for several sounds, so carvers spelled by ear: the Hälsingtuna stone writes Þorsteinn as þurstin. The 24-rune Elder Futhark, with runes such as ᚨ and ᛖ, is older than the Vikings, so a "Viking name in runes" written with it is out of period.

Most runestones date from 950 to 1100 and name the person who raised the stone, the person it remembers and how they were related; about one in eight was raised by a woman alone. King Gorm's stone at Jelling in Denmark reads: King Gorm made these monuments in memory of Thyra, his wife. The builder above writes a line in the same words.