I recently got the news of a hockey player being drafted to my favorite team, and I’m unsure as to how to pronounce his name. He is Ole-Kristian Tollefsen. The other question I have is about his surname. Does it mean “The Son of Tollef?”
Tollefsen is a patronymic, and has the meaning “The Son of Tollef?” as you say, but the naming practice in Norway changed about 100 years ago. A new law was imposed so that people had to select a "family name", with the impact that many selected the patronymic as their family name, in the way of "freezing" it. So the Tollefsen name will have been passed down thorough several generations even though the father was not Tollef. As far as I know only Iceland still use "true" patronymics as surnames. Ole-Kristian is pronounced pretty straight forward.
Name Pronunciation and Surname Meaning
Posted - 25/06/2002 : 18:03:44
