Surname is not shown in the graph box and in the info box, when origin is set to ‘Patronymic’ or ‘Matronymic’. For other values af origin the surname is displayed fine.
FTV v.0.1.170 in Gramps v.6.0.6 on MacOS Ventura
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In Scandinavia — including the Swedish‑Finnish regions, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland — patronyms and matronyms are not considered surnames. They are descriptive parts of the personal name, indicating parentage, and therefore they traditionally should not be placed in the surname field.
However, they should still be searchable and sortable as if they were surnames, even if they are not displayed as such. The same applies to Norwegian farm names before the 1923 Name Act, when fixed hereditary surnames became mandatory. Several Nordic countries went through similar transitions between roughly 1880 and 1920 as hereditary family names became more common, but historically a patronym, a matronym, or a place‑based identifier is not a surname unless a family explicitly adopted it as a hereditary family name.
Iceland still follows a strict patronymic/matronymic naming system today, and the Faroe Islands also continue to allow and use patronymic forms. I can’t speak for naming traditions outside the Nordic region, but this is how it works in our context.
Doesn’t Danish naming practice follow the same general historical pattern as Norway and Sweden, with patronyms and matronyms being descriptive name elements rather than hereditary surnames?
For those interested in a more academic perspective, there is also relevant information in this peer‑reviewed article in Nordic Journal of Socio‑Onomastics, especially on pages 33–34:
Waldispühl, M. (2024). Personal names and migration: An overview. Nordic Journal of Socio‑Onomastics, 4(3), 15–58. https://doi.org/10.59589/noso.42024.17635
In Denmark we used patronymic surnames until around 1900.
I usually use the term ‘lastname’ (in Danish ‘efternavn’) and in Gramps this is called ‘surname’. So no matter whether a lastname is given, taken, inherited or whatever, it’s a surname in Gramps. I think it’s fine, that you can indicate by the origin field the type of surname a person has.
Using patronymic surnames the surname changes for each generation. If Peter is son of Jens Hansen his full name will be Peter Jensen. They still use this system (at least to some extend) in Iceland, and therefore the paper telephone books are/were sorted by first name 
Thanks for letting me know about this potential bug. Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the issue with the latest version of FTV:
Please provide more information about the name and your FTV configuration, especially the box profile as well as the name format and abbreviation rules. You can also contact me via private chat on this forum or create a GitHub issue, if the discussion about this problem will be lengthy, in order to reduce the number of notifications people who are subscribed to this thread receive.
I’m Norwegian, so I’m fully familiar with how patronyms and matronyms work. Norway and Denmark used them in essentially the same way historically: they were not surnames (etternavn/efternavn), but descriptive additions to the given name. They were never hereditary family names unless a family later chose to adopt them as such.
Because of how modern systems handle names, they should be indexed and sorted like an English‑style surname, but they are still not displayed as a surname in the surname field. That part is clear.
What I was asking was simply whether Denmark has changed its definition or treatment of patronyms/matronyms in the last 20–30 years — similar to how Norway introduced the 1923 Name Act requiring everyone to adopt a hereditary surname, which was later revised.
My point is that in the Scandinavian/Nordic context, the standard is still that patronyms and matronyms are not treated as surnames, even if software should index them that way for practical reasons.
Since my ancestors all lived in Sweden, I have tons of surnames set as patronymics in my tree. They all show up fine in the graph and info boxes. So, as @ztlxltl has suggested, the issue you and @csam have may (must?) have something do do with your FTV configuration.
I don’t have any issues with this, so I’m not sure why you assume that.
I only clarified that matronyms and patronyms are not surnames in the Nordic naming tradition.
My point wasn’t about how FTV renders them, but about the underlying definition. In the Nordic countries, patronymics and matronymics were never surnames (etternavn/efternavn) in the legal or historical sense — they were descriptive additions to the given name, not hereditary family names.
That’s why I asked whether Denmark has changed its treatment of patronyms/matronyms in the last few decades, similar to how Norway introduced the 1923 Name Act requiring everyone to adopt a fixed surname.
So the issue I’m raising isn’t about configuration, but about the fact that in the Scandinavian/Nordic context, patronymics and matronymics are not considered surnames, even if genealogy software needs to index them that way for practical reasons.
It’s not a FTV problem, but more generic.
The problem is also in the Person Editor window. I just didn’t realise it, because it is only visible after reopening the person editor.
Other graphs e.g. Pedigree show the same behaviour.
Will open a bug report.
Sorry about the misunderstanding. In an earlier post you wrote:
and I read this as if you encountered the same thing as @csam : patronymics not showing up properlu in FTV. If not, I do not understand what you mean when you write that patronymics are not displayed as surnames. They surely are for me. The only difference I can see when using the patronymics setting is that the surname isn’t automatically passed on to the person’s children.
The problem with the display of name is not FTV related, so maybe this should be moved to another thread. Done
I found when the ‘problem’ arises.
I have a number of persons who have changed their last name, so having multiple surnames. Therefore I have changed in Preferences → Data → Display Options the [Name Format] from “Given Surname Suffix” to “Given Primary Suffix”.
With “Given Primary Suffix” and surname origin equals “Patronymic” or “Matronymic” the Preferred Name is only displayed as the Given name.
I’m not sure whether this is a bug or if it is intended.
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Can you test if Gramps Preferences → Data tab → checkbox “Consider single pa/matronymic as surname” fixes this for you?
It changes the preferences.patronimic-surname preference. In NameDisplay the global variable PAT_AS_SURN is set accordingly which in turn is used in the _raw_primary_surname_only function:
...
if (
not PAT_AS_SURN
and nrsur == 1
and (
raw_surn_data["origintype"]["value"] == _ORIGINPATRO
or raw_surn_data["origintype"]["value"] == _ORIGINMATRO
)
):
return ""
else:
return raw_surn_data["surname"]
...
So a patronymic / matronymic name is ignored for the name format keyword Primary if the checkbox “Consider single pa/matronymic as surname” is not checked.
When using the name format Given Primary Suffix and the checkbox is checked, the patronymic name is displayed.
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That did the trick! but I had to restart Gramps for it to take effect.
Thanks a lot
Yes. The way that Gramps handles matronyms and patronyms is not ideal.
Well, you could try to read the whole comment as a starter, not only get hooked on a single line…?
i.e. this part: “My point is that in the Scandinavian/Nordic context, the standard is still that patronyms and matronyms are not treated as surnames, even if software should index them that way for practical reasons.”
ot the comment i wrote before the one you got hooked on, this:
”In Scandinavia — including the Swedish‑Finnish regions, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland — patronyms and matronyms are not considered surnames. They are descriptive parts of the personal name, indicating parentage, and therefore they traditionally should not be placed in the surname field.
However, they should still be searchable and sortable as if they were surnames, even if they are not displayed as such. The same applies to Norwegian farm names before the 1923 Name Act, when fixed hereditary surnames became mandatory. Several Nordic countries went through similar transitions between roughly 1880 and 1920 as hereditary family names became more common, but historically a patronym, a matronym, or a place‑based identifier is not a surname unless a family explicitly adopted it as a hereditary family name.
Iceland still follows a strict patronymic/matronymic naming system today, and the Faroe Islands also continue to allow and use patronymic forms. I can’t speak for naming traditions outside the Nordic region, but this is how it works in our context.”
and this: “For those interested in a more academic perspective, there is also relevant information in this peer‑reviewed article in Nordic Journal of Socio‑Onomastics, especially on pages 33–34:
Waldispühl, M. (2024). Personal names and migration: An overview. Nordic Journal of Socio‑Onomastics, 4(3), 15–58. https://doi.org/10.59589/noso.42024.17635”
I did read your whole comment. I am literate, you know. So no need to repeat. And I agree completely with what you write about patronyms, they aren’t surnames but personal names. But I still don’t understand what you meant when you wrote “but they are still not displayed as a surname in the surname field”. What surname field are you referring to? Where are they not displayed?
Done
These issue reports seems to be related:
| Issue | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0013764 | Resolved 6.0.1 PR 2045 |
The Patronymic field is not displayed |
| 0013532 | Acknowleged | Fan Chart View ignores “Name format” setting |
| 0013765 | Closed duplicate | The Patronymic field is not displayed |
This posting has been converted to Wiki type. Any registered user can Edit it. Please add other related issues that you might find.
What I meant is simply this: in Gramps, a patronymic should not be placed or displayed in the surname position, because it is not a hereditary family name. That’s all.
Patronymics are still fully visible in the name structure, but they are not supposed to appear in the “Surname” slot of the display format. That’s the only point I was making.
Nevertheless, for practical reasons, it must still be indexed and searchable in the same manner as a surname, purely for usability reasons.
So if a user searches for a “surname”, they will also get patronyms, matronyms, and any other non‑hereditary naming patterns in the results. They simply should not be displayed in the English‑language “Surname” field.
For example:
Name: Tone Halvorsdatter Kolstad
Surname: Kols
…if her full name is “Tone Halvorsdatter Kolstad Kols”, because Halvorsdatter is a patronymic and Kolstad is a farm name. Neither of these is a hereditary surname unless explicitly defined as such, or unless the naming laws in the relevant country had already changed to classify them as surnames.
In Norway, four key laws affect this distinction: those of 1923, 1964, 2002, and 2017. While all of these laws define what counts as an etternavn (hereditary surname), names used before 1923 were not regulated as surnames at all, and patronymics and farm names functioned as non‑hereditary name elements rather than family names.
It is also worth noting that during the 1870s and 1880s it became fashionable in some areas to adopt a fixed family surname, but this was a social trend rather than a legal standard, and the traditional naming system remained dominant until the 1923 law.
Note: I use Norway as an example here, but similar transitions occurred across the Nordic countries. Denmark phased out patronymics with the laws of 1828 and 1904; Sweden with the 1901 law; Finland with the 1921 law; and the Faroe Islands and Greenland followed the Danish timeline.
Iceland is the exception, as it retained patronymics as the primary naming system.
In all of these countries, names used before these laws were not regulated as hereditary surnames.
I trust this sheds enough clarity on the matter.
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