Which, like most Icelandic peculiarities, is adorable, but doesn’t scale well, especially with the pool of available names being restricted by the Naming Committee (in Iceland, it is illegal to give a child a name that is not on a list of approved names). With under 400,000 people in the country, and almost no family names, Icelandic phone directories apparently list people’s nicknames as well, so you don’t call the wrong Gunnlaugur Þóraresson by mistake.
Which, like most Icelandic peculiarities, is adorable, but doesn’t scale well, especially with the pool of available names being restricted by the Naming Committee (in Iceland, it is illegal to give a child a name that is not on a list of approved names). With under 400,000 people in the country, and almost no family names, Icelandic phone directories apparently list people’s nicknames as well, so you don’t call the wrong Gunnlaugur Þóraresson by mistake.