北歐人的名字

During the Viking period and Medieval period, most people were only known by their first names and this has of course caused a lot of problems during coversations. So they put names together in order to identify one person from another. The way they put names together can be by order within a family, son or daughter of someone, occupations, or by regions.
The ending 'son' means someone's son. Eg. Ericson refers to 'the son of Eric'. So if you have a whole name such as 'Albert Ericson', it means 'This is Albert, the son of Eric' and this Eric would also be referred to by region or village. So in those days people would say 'Albert, the son of Eric from XXX village'
The ending 'berg' means 'mountains'. The word is the same in Old German and in modern day Scandinavian languages (as they are highly influenced by High German - Hoch Deutsch). Eg. Goldberg means 'gold mountain'. This could mean that the person is from the mountain region. This is a surname that refers to the region of a person.
Eg. Hans Goldberg - 'Hans from the gold mountains'
Thomas Meer - 'Thomas from near by the sea'
These regional names are mostly German and then translated into other languages. The ending 'berg' is usually more German than Scandinavian.
One thing you might like to know is that in Iceland, a son and a daughter would have a different surname even when they are from the same family! The son would have a surname meaning 'XXX's son'; the daughter would have a surname of 'XXX's daughter'! I'm sure you can read more about this on the web.
Hope that helps!

2007-03-16 02:38:14 補充：
One more thing - 'son' is used in Danish and English; 'sohn' is German, 'sen' is Swedish and Norwegian.

2007-03-16 02:42:10 補充：
Oops pardon me - 'son' is Swedish and Norwegian, 'sen' is mostly Danish but they also use 'son' is they were originally from Sweden or Norway. Sorry I just remember my friends' last names!

幾好喎^^
對呢d野又清楚好多喇~~