r/Norway • u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 • 3d ago
Language Surnames that end with "Stad"
Watching a bunch of Anne Bjørnstad shows and I'm on Beforiegners now. I've noticed alot of the crew have "Stad" at the end of their names. Google says it means "place". Is that true. So would she be "Bearplace"?
Lots of 'Dottirs" as well but that one I understand.
Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated. I love her shows and reading all the interesting surnames between them. Thank you in advance for any assistance.
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u/agente_99 3d ago
«The surname Stad comes from the Old Norse sted, meaning "place" or "farm". It was a common ending in farm names in the Viking Age and was used to denote an independent farm established by a single family.»
https://no.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gårdsnavn
So I’d say Bjørnstad would be more like «from Bjørn’s farm», assuming Bjørn was possibly a Viking with their own land, but someone with more knowledge can correct me.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 2d ago
Now it makes more sense than ever. How logical it really is had I put more thought into it. "Sted/homestead". Now I understand how the names work there. I'll need to pay better attention to how things are spelled. Alot of our English words are similiar to other Germanic languages for example sugar, sucre, sukkar. Just need to pay attention now. I'm familiar with how the Icelandic one's work. I have Scottish and German ancestry so you know how those names go. Thank you so much for helping me with this!
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u/mpbjoern 1d ago
Way later than the Viking age. Surnames in ordinary people weren’t used in Scandinavia up until the 17-18 hundreds.
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u/BoredCop 1d ago
True, but many of today's surnames were used as geographical place names long before they became surnames.
The farm names were commonly used as an address, and in official records to differentiate people with similar names. So a church book entry for a person would say Name Namesson Farmname. It wasn't a big change for that to morph into Name Middlename Surname, with the farm name becoming a surname for the family living there.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
Ok. I got it. Anything can be replaced for stad. It's many variations on the actual root. So like when Lagertha was Earl Ingstad, hers would been farmer place?
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u/andooet 3d ago
There are variations like "-heim" (home), or "-gard/gård" (farm), but it's also common to use natural features like "-skog" (forest) and "-ås" (hill)
Bjørnheim Bjørnsgard Bjørnskog Bjørnås
These are all real places in Norway (though some are not more than a bus stop these days). I didn't check how many people have these as surnames, but I'm pretty sure I've heard all of them
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
They use these names in the realms alot, don't they?
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u/snoozieboi 3d ago
The cool thing about Ødegård is that (unless I have been told wrong) Øde = abandoned/desolate and it comes from the black death times when so many farms were abandoned.
Think about it, people were dying all around and we had no clue about how it spread. This is also why doctors had these crazy masks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor_costume
I believe some were open at the bottom, because they didn't know about germs and viruses, they thought the disease spread through smell and thus used strongly smelling things inside their mask.
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u/Tilladarling 3d ago edited 2d ago
Yep, Ødegård and Øygard both have that meaning and many of these farms were left abandoned after the black plague. Either because their owners died, or because the survivors left them in favor of better farms where all the original inhabitants had died and so the survivors moved up in the world. Not all Ødegård names are that old, however. My great-grandfather bought an abandoned farm that had been standing empty for about 50 years in the 1800’s. He took the name Ødegård after he bought the farm. In his case, I believe the home was left abandoned because the owners emigrated to Australia
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u/Spargimorbo 2d ago
With my background from Hordaland I always thought Øygard referred to a barrier of islands protecting the coast, like the Øygarden west of Bergen. Until I visited the cemetery at Lom and found all kinds variations of the name, which given the location could not possibly mean what I had thought it meant but rather referred to an abandoned farm with various spellings. Thanks Lom - travel and learn!
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 2d ago
Oh wow! That is absolutely amazing story! He was able to take over the name and keep it going. I love hearing stuff like this.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
That's intense. I remember reading about that years and years ago.
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u/snoozieboi 3d ago
I forgot one of my points. People did not dare to meet other people, so they invented "Brevstein", "letter stone", basically a stone you placed letters under to communicate with the world around. Or at least I have been told it was used in the Olden/Stryn area, where the famous sole survivor "Jostedalsrypa" (myth?) came from. Apparently 66% of all norwegians died form the plague.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
I will definitely look this up tomorrow. Thank you for sending things for me yo research. I love that.
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3d ago
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u/KnittedTea 2d ago
The spelling doesn't match the pronunciation for Stadlandet. It should be Stadtlandet, or Stattlandet. It doesn't have the same etymology as the ending -stad. It's from the word staðr which means roughly "that which stands".
The peninsula makes kind of a barrier or a long natural breakwater, making the seas somewhat calmer on both sides depending on wind direction, but rougher at the end pointing towards the North Sea/Norwegian Sea.
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u/gnomeannisanisland 2d ago
Not a historian or entomologist, but I'd interpret it as "The area surrounding (and maybe including) the place that had its name shortened to just Stad"
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 2d ago
The land of places and towns? If Stad is a place, city or town then I'm assuming land is just land and maybe et is the word for "And"? I know in Danish it's "Og". That's my guess. We'll see what someone who knows tells us.
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u/grenadeaple 3d ago
Yes, same as in the other germanic languages it means place, town or village.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
I didn't know that either. I really appreciate you all coming together to help me. Thank you.
I'm Germanic. I should know this stuff.
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u/snoozieboi 3d ago
In the US they talk about Home steading and using the "place" as a verb "to make a home place".
Also cool "Stad" fact is that the whole prohibition time in the US, when alcohol was illegal, the official name was the "Vollstead act", from a guy with norwegian heritage.
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u/Tilladarling 3d ago
Fun fact: the English word homestead looks almost the same as the Norwegian word hjemsted (or old-fashioned heimstad). They share the same roots, but while hjemsted means “the place you come from,” homestead, as we know, usually refers to a farm or household. Same family of words - slightly different meaning ☺️
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
That was an interesting read on him. I love learning. Thank you for sending that. I never knew a Norwegian helped with that.
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u/DumplingWithLegs 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes, those are called person-characterizing names. Usually they were connected to your work title or a geographical place. Like the British surname "Baker". Name endings like -sted/stad, -foss, -gard were actual places the bearer had connection to, like farms, rivers, waterfalls etc. Patronyms are also person-characterizing names. Haraldsson - son of Harald. Bjørnsdotter - daughter of Bjørn. "Place" is not really a good translation as it is very general, but Stad could be a farm, a village, a city - a place where there was a group of people dwelling.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
I am familiar with how the names were incorporated. Very simple and logical way. Im really happy with everything you all are teaching me. Thank you.
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u/et_sted_ved_fjorden 3d ago
About surnames in Norway historically. People were named after their father: Olsen is the son of Ole, Olsdatter is the daughter of Ole. In addition they used the name of the farm where they lived. Ole Olsen Vik was thus he son of Ole and lived on the farm Vik. When surnames became inherited names (by law in 1924, but for many a bit before that) people either kept the farm named or the patronym.
So Anne Bjørnstad probably has ancestors who around 1900 lived on the farm Bjørnstad. And Per Hansen has an ancestor named Hans.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
That's so neat. Alot of different countries peoples have done that and started modernizing them later on. I'm really enjoying this thread learning from you all. Thank you.
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u/FlaviusStilicho 1d ago
It’s also interesting that you can read (to some degree) what kind of farm it was… there is a bit of a hierarchy at play you can decipher from the name… a good example is our national team football captain.. Martin Ødegård. His last name literally means “Abandoned Farm” … more specifically it relates to a farm of poor quality that was abandoned during the population decline after the Black Death. Population took 300 years to rebound… so for a very long time these farms were just not in use as farms… when people eventually started clearing them again, they had already been given that name.
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u/SentientSquirrel 3d ago
Yes that is correct:
The names ending in -stad were common before and after the 9th century. The compound -stad names often carried a prefix derived from the name of the settler who cleared the land for the dwelling. Examples include Narvestad, Bjørnstad, Skjeggestad, and Finnstad.
Translated from source: https://slektinorge.no/eldre-stedsnavn-og-etternavn/
In the case of Bjørnstad, that means there was in all likelihood a man called Bjørn who at some point cleared some land, and the name was created based on that. Bjørn means bear, but has also been used as a first name of centuries. Thus the name doesn't necessarily mean there were any bears around where that farm was located.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
That was amazing read! I liked that. It explains alot. My daughter's Maiden is Norberg so reading the Berg section was interesting. This was outstanding! Thank you, my friend :)
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u/Gaddpeis 2d ago
To add on: '-stad' has over time transitioned from just meaning a Place, to also meaning Town and City. 'Hovedstad' = Capitol (Main Place / Main City)
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u/Orph8 2d ago
There are different naming traditions. British surnames were often associated with their occupations (Thatcher, Smith, Miller, Baker, etc.), old Norse surnames were often paternal. Norwegian surnames are often place bound (often farms). My surname (xxxxxstad), for example, means "The place by the river xxxxx", which is a small collection of farms situated where a glacier used to run into the sea. Everyone that knows of this particular cluster of farms would know that that's where my family is from (and though I never lived there, and have a very different dialect from this place, I am fairly frequently asked if my family is from there).
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 2d ago
My family was the same way. The Scottish side was MacFhearguis and then it got Anglecized to Ferguson. "Son of Fergus".
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u/FineMaize5778 2d ago
Tvedt is also a common ending of last names, it also means place
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 2d ago
I'll look for that as well. I like watching Bjørnstad's shows so I after I finish this one, I'll probably do Billionaire Island again and look at their names. Thank you :)
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u/Knot_Click 3d ago
The word "stad" may refer more to a place like a small city or town where trade took place. Lots of todays cities was founded when they were granted the rights of "kjøpstad" (place of trade). We also have some places called "bergstad", which were mining towns. Today we have some cities till ending in -stad, like Grimstad, which directly could be translated to "ugly town", but it's actually a quite beautiful little town today.
Bjærnstad, I'd translate to "Beartown".
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 3d ago
Interesting! So towns and people both use it at the end. I learned alot here! Thank you so much :)
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u/No_Condition7374 3d ago edited 3d ago
The most common surnames in Norway are names of places, mostly farms. In continental Europe and in Britain names of occupations are most common (Smith, Miller, Shepherd, Fisher, Taylor ...). Norway had barely any villages, so names after occupation are very rare.
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u/ejuo 3d ago
Doesn’t Grimstad translate to Grims place, where Grim is a man’s first name?
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u/No_Condition7374 3d ago edited 3d ago
No, it is from the farm Grøm which had its name from the river Gróa.
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u/MrElendig 3d ago
depends on which grimstad.
Had an apprentice here in bergen who were told to go to grimstad and pick up something. Thankfully he called when he got to trengereid to ask if he should drive towards voss or samnanger...
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u/Knot_Click 3d ago
... and "Bergen" comes from the German word for mountains, since the city is surrounded by 7 big mountains. Old name they got from the The Hanseatic League, which originated from Germany.
A joke in Norway about people from Bergen, goes something like this:
You know what the one bergenser told the other, when the Germans came sailing into the port in Bergen the 9th of April 1940? "Finally, reinforcements!"2
u/Puzzleheaded_Fuel787 2d ago
I love these threads. I'm learning so much. I had no idea about Bergen. Don't really hear it here. I'm glad I learned that :)
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u/ManWhoIsDrunk 3d ago
Bjørnstad would be Bearplace or Bearstead, yes.