Forgive my ignorance. I am tracking family history & was surprised to learn one of my great grandmothers was Norwegian.
They seem to have taken the last name Faye when they came to Canada, which I assume is derived from Fage. William from Welliam.
But Olsen was the family name, & all the siblings’ name prior to immigration. I’m not even sure where Fage comes from.
Where did Trygve go? Would it have been a middle name, perhaps lazily dropped on some immigration form?
Thank you in advance!
by veganacnesufferers1
3 comments
Norway didn’t really have formal surnames back then.
It was often a first name, then a patronym (like Olsen = son of Ole/Ola), and if further clarification was needed they’d add the name of the farm they came from or the village / town.
Trygve is a traditional name. Maybe his middle name was Vilhelm, and since that’s the same name as William he decided that would be easier in Canada. Could be Fage is the farm’s name. I do see there’s 9 people in Norway with the surname Fage.
It was common to switch from patronym to using the farm’s name when going further away from home. You see people moving from rural parts of Norway to cities did the same. My grandfather did similar coming to US. He used his patronym as he arrived Ellis Island, but a few years later we find him in the US census with the farm name as surname.
Records up to 100 years ago can be found for free and without registration at [digitalarkivet.no](http://digitalarkivet.no)
That includes church books and censuses. If you’ve got a birth date, that’s probably your best bet of finding relatives there.
It’s a little bit hard to work out from what you written, but a few general points: Norwegian family names up until around 1922 were largely patronymic. So Olsen would literally be son of Ole. But this practice was not at all consistent. Some used fixed last names before 1922, some would be based on farm names. And several people used different last names throughout their lives. For women it can be very confusing.
And as I understand it, it was commonplace for Norwegians to change their names when they emigrated. Trygve is a fairly common first name for a male. “Welliam” is a dialectal way to say William in some regions.
He is listed as Trygve Welliam Fage Olsen in the Census 1891 (Oslo). My guess; this is a registration error. His name is Trygve William Faye Olsen in 1894 (confirmation in Hurum) and in the ship lists for 1902 and 1905.
EDIT: He is given three first names when baptized; Trygve William Faye. (Born 26.feb.1880, baptized 02.may 1880)