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Abstract

This article is a study of the names of Icelandic bulls in the latter part of the twentieth century. It presents an analysis of a collection of names taken for the most part from the lists and catalogs of cattle breeding societies and centres, including the names given to nearly 1200 bulls from all over Iceland. Following a brief discussion of some general features of animal names and previous reseítrch in the field in Iceland and Scandinavia, a two-fold classification of the material is presented: first the names are classified according to the probable motive for the choice of name, as has been common in earlier studies. Consideration is given to whether the name is derived from the animal's home or origin, its color or other physical traits, its behavior, and so forth. It emerges that names derived from place-names (farms and districts) seem to be more commonly given to bulls than to other domestic animals. The second classification attempts to uncover the correlation between the corpus of bull names and other Icelandic words/names. Two matters are given special attention: whether bull names are also known as names for persons, real or fictional, and whether the names are homonymous with Icelandic common nouns (or adjectives) — and if so in what semantic field. It turns out that a portion of the names are to be found in old Icelandic sagas and myths. The article concludes with a summary of the main results, including the frequency of individual names, the most common motives for name selection, and the apparent connection between bull names and Icelandic medieval literature. An appendix contains an index of all the names in the collection, along with their frequency.