Committee split

News item in today’s Fréttablaðið: All the members of the Icelandic Name Committee have resigned over the name Eleonora.

It may or may not come as a surprise to some of you that Iceland actually has a committee that approves or turns down ‘new’ or foreign names. In other words, if you wanted to name your child something that has no precedence in the Icelandic naming laws, like say, Starling or Zooey or Satan or Apple or something equally weird, you’d have to present your choice to the committee. If they give your name the nod, you’re home free; if not, you’ll have to come up with something different.

Now, I realize that this will seem exceedingly meddlesome to a lot of people; an attack on personal freedom, and whathaveyou. You’d have to bear in mind, though, that Icelandic is one complicated language and one of its features is that the nouns – not just the verbs – are conjugated according to case. This also applies to names. For instance, YT’s name – ‘Alda’ – changes to ‘Öldu’ in a different case, and the man’s name ‘Egill’ f’rinstance, changes to Agli. [Trust me, if you grow up leaning the language you’re OK, but if you have to learn it as an adult, it’s a bitch.]

So in other words, what the Name Committee is entrusted with doing, among other things, is to ensure that the name will fit in with the grammatical requirements of the Icelandic language, and that it will conjugate properly.

Back to our story. Evidently, the Name Committee got the name Eleonora for consideration, and turned it down. A complaint was filed, and the request was turned down a second time. After the Name Committee had turned the name down three times, a letter came from the Ministry of Justice, claiming that the Committee’s decision was ‘reprehensible’ and urging them to give the matter more consideration. The Name Committee promptly passed the name, then resigned, effective immediately.

Bizarre. However, I have to wonder: if you were to go now and name your child Horsehair – would you be able to do it? On account of the committee having split?

Anyone willing to try?

MEANWHILE THE WEATHER COMMITTEE SEZ...
... That we have chequered weather today. Rained like gangbusters last night, then sunny spells this morning. Around noon it started up like gangbusters again. Right now we have drizzle. It’s reasonably mild, though, and the wind is tolerable; temps are currently 2°C [but I don’t believe it – it doesn’t feel that cold] and sunrise today was at 07.57, sunset at 18.32.