Names Behind the Numbers - Nielsen & Westlund

My paternal grandparents, my Dad’s parents, were immigrants to America. My paternal grandfather, George Martin (née Jørgen Martinus) Nielsen, emigrated from Denmark in 1890.  My paternal grandmother, Ida Maria Westlund, emigrated from Sweden in 1900. Besides the obvious language barrier, tracing the names of my ancestor’s in these countries presents unique challenges not faced when tracing my Creger & Blayden families.

Historically, children in Sweden and Denmark were given surnames using the naming pattern known as patronymics. Under this naming convention, a child’s surname was constructed from the father’s first name. Thus, the daughters of a man named Lars Eriksson would be given the surname Larsdotter and his sons would carry the surname Larsson. 

Patronymics sometimes created a situation where several people in a community had the same name, i.e. Lars Larsson, Jens Jenssen, etc. This led some people to have a third name added based on a location, an occupation or a personal characteristic that would differentiate one person from his neighbors. In some cases, this third name might be adopted as the family surname. 

My Danish great great great grandfather is a perfect example of this. He was baptized Niels Christensen however as an adult he’s identified as Niels Christensen Kudsk. The sobriquet “Kudsk” which means the driver of a cart or carriage, differentiated Niels from every other Niels Christensen in the area. “Kudsk” was not adopted as the family’s surname, however.

In was customary also for Swedish and Danish women to keep their maiden name throughout their life and to not adopt their husband’s name when they married. Thus, my Danish great grandmother was known as Mette Kirstine Poulsdatter throughout her life and my Swedish great grandmother was Maria Larsdotter throughout her life.

Sweden abolished patronymics with the passage of the Names Adoption Act in December 1901. Prior to its enactment many Swede’s had already adopted a nature or geographic based surname. In fact, my family adopted the surname Vestergren or Westlund, meaning from the west land, in the 1890s. Thus my grandmother, who was baptized Ida Maria Larsdotter became Ida Maria Westlund before emigrating to America.

In Denmark, patronymics was traditionally used by the rural populations. In 1828 a decree said that all Danish people should have a firm family name. It wasn’t until the 1850s, however, that patronymics truly began to disappear. My great grandfather was named Mathias Nielsen. In 1858 he named his first born son Niels Christian Mathiassen using patronymics. In 1860, however, he named his second son Poul Peter Nielsen thus marking the adoption of the surname Nielsen. 

If you look back at my previous article about the names of my Creger & Blayden ancestors, you can see how easy it is to trace each family line back one generation after another by simply looking at the names on the list. 

Creger (Helen¹, James Iver², Peter Alexander⁴, Samuel⁸, Peter¹⁶, Jacob³²)

Here it’s easy to see that Helen is the daughter of James Iver and James Iver is the son of Peter Alexander and Peter Alexander is the son of Samuel, etc. It’s not possible to do this same thing with my Nielsen and Westlund ancestors. 

In the Westlund list below you see that there are 7 women who have the surname Larsdotter: 

Larsdotter (Maria⁷), (Ingeborg¹³), (Anna¹⁵), (Anna²⁷), (Anna⁵⁹), (Karin¹⁹⁵), (Britta²¹³)

Each woman is not the daughter of the woman whose name precedes hers. The only thing we know is that each woman was the daughter of a man named Lars. There is no way to know which Lars on this list is the father of which Larsdotter. The only way to know the father’s name is to look at each girl’s birth or baptismal record. 

This lack of a common surname makes it much more challenging to research my Scandinavian ancestors. And, as a result, the list of known ancestors is much shorter.

NIELSEN - DENMARK

Christensdatter (Kirsten⁹)

Christensen (Niels⁸), (Christen¹⁸)

Jespersdatter (Kirsten³⁹)

Jørgensdatter (Kirsten¹⁹)

Nielsen (John Robert¹, Jørgen Martinus², Mathias⁴)

Olsdatter (Karen¹¹)

Pedersen (Poul¹⁰)

Poulsdotter (Mette Kirstine⁵)

WESTLUND - SWEDEN

Anderson (Carl²⁸)

Bengtsdotter (Ingeborg⁴⁹)

Bengtsson (Lars²⁶)

Carlsson (Lars¹⁴)

Eriksdotter (Anna²⁵)

Eriksson (Lars⁶), (Håkan¹⁹⁴)

Gustafsdotter (Annicka¹⁰⁷)

Håkansdotter (Ingjerd⁶¹), (Marit⁹⁷)
Håkansson (Samuel²⁴)

Jansson (Olof⁵⁸)

Jonasson (Samuel⁹⁶)

Larsdotter (Maria⁷), (Ingeborg¹³), (Anna¹⁵), (Anna²⁷), (Anna⁵⁹), (Karin¹⁹⁵), (Britta²¹³)

Larsson (Olof⁶⁰)

Mattsdotter (Britta⁵³)

Mattson (Anders⁵⁶), (Matthis¹⁰⁶), Matthes²¹²)

Olsdotter (Karen¹¹), (Annika²⁹)

Olsson (Lars³⁰)

Pedersen (Poul¹⁰)

Pehrsson (Bengt⁵²), (Per¹⁰⁴)

Robander (Stina⁵⁷)

Samuelsson (Erik¹²), (Håkan⁴⁸)

Steffansdotter (Kersten³¹)

Westlund (Ida Maria³)