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We have a saying in Norwegian; a pet child has many names
(kjært barn har mange navn). This is true, at least regarding
all the names for this country.
- NORGE - Norwegian bokmål (= traditional Norwegian),
- NOREG - Norwegian nynorsk (= new Norwegian)
- NORVÈGE - French
- NORWEGEN - German
- NORUEGA - Spanish
- NOREGUR - Icelandic
- NORRA - Faeroe Islands
Or, more poetic:
- "The land of the midnight sun"
- "The land of the vikings"
- "The northern way"
Why two different names in Norwegian?
As discussed elsewhere, Norway has two official Norwegian
languages, Bokmål and Nynorsk. The different background and
creation of these languages explain why the name of the country
is different: Bokmål is most related to Danish after about 400
years under Denmark's rule, and Nynorsk is a new
"creation" from the 19th century based upon the rural
dialects and probably closer to the old Nordic language.
Let's first take a look at the English way of naming Norway:
north + way, it's saying pretty much about the location of the
country. The German Norwegen is the same thing. And these
forms are actually the most "accurate" names! So why
don't the Norwegians call their country Norvei (nord + vei) as
other Europeans?
The background
The oldest sources of the spelling is found in England. In a
Latin text in the Durham books from around 840 AD, it is written
NORUAGIA. The U can be read as a V. Names of this shape or very
much like it, are found in texts all around Europe from 900 AD
and onwards.
In an Old English text from around 880 AD, it is written
NORWEG. The oldest Nordic spelling is written in runes on the
Danish Jellinge stone from around 980: NURUIAK. The V is well
preserved in most other languages, but somehow, the Norwegians
dropped it.
The oldest Old Norse spelling is NORDRVEGR, meaning "the
country in the north" or "the way to the north".
This indicates that the name was given by people south of Norway,
since this was north to them. Far back in time, when people
travelled to the West, they said they were going VESTRVEGR, to
the East, AUSTRVEGR, so it's logical that going North would be
NORDRVEGR.
In the 1880s, when Nynorsk was created and the spelling
decided, the linguists found that the pronounication of the
country's name among common people was more often /nori/, /nore/,
/norri/, /norig/, /noreg/. Thus, they decided that the spelling
of Norway in the new language should be as close as possible to
what they found to be the original name. So there we are, the
reason for the different spelling of Norway in the two Norwegian
languages.
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