Daily Ancestorgårdsnavn
A gårdsnavn is a farm name: the third part of an old Norwegian name, as in Halvor Olsen Bratteberg, showing where a person lived rather than a fixed surname.
In the 1800s a typical Norwegian name had a given name, a patronymic and a farm name. The farm name worked like an address: when a man moved from one farm to another he usually took the new farm's name, so one person can appear under two or three names.
A law of 1925 made hereditary family names compulsory, and many families then kept the patronymic or the farm name they were using at the time as a fixed surname. The oldest farm names are short nature names such as Berg, Vik or Sand.
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How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "gårdsnavn." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/norwegian/gardsnavn. Last checked 2026-10-28.