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Global Sourcebook for International Data Management
by Graham Rhind
For supplementary information, see links to post office home pages here , to postal code pages here and to other personal name and addressing issues pages here .
1.234,45
(where , indicates the decimal separator and . the thousands separator)
Icelandic is spoken by 100% of the population.
Note: This section last updated 25th June 2011
Care must be taken when addressing Icelanders as members of the same family will have different surnames. Surnames are still formed from one of the given names of the father (or, more rarely, the mother) followed by dottír for females and son for males. Thus Eirík and Rutar, son and daughter respectively of Magnus Jonsson will be Eirík Magnusson and Rutar Magnusdottír.
Some families have family names which are inherited as is.
A law change has made it possible now for the mother’s name to be used as the stem for -dottir or -son instead of the father’s, or for both to be used in a double-barrelled family name.
Married women retain their own name. People are addressed using their first names, even in format situations.
Given the complexity of naming conventions, and that many Icelanders never know the family names of their friends or colleagues, Icelandic telephone directories are ordered on the basis of given names.
Given names that have not been previously used in Iceland must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee. The criterium for acceptance is whether they can easily incorporated into the Icelandic language. They must contain only letters found in the Icelandic alphabet and they must be able to be declined (that is, modified according to their grammatical case). Girls must have a female name and boys a male name. No more than three personal names per person are allowed.
Tables of names can be acquired: given names , surnames/family names , family name prefixes , forms of address , job titles
Icelandic legal company entities are:
Einkafyrirtaeki – sole proprietor Einkahlutafélagsgormið (EHF.) – private limited liability company Einstaklingsfyrirtæki - sole proprietorship Hlutafélag (HF.) – public limited liability company Opinbert hlutafélag (Ohf.) - government owned company Sameignarfélag (SF) – Partnership Samlagsfélag - Co-operative Samvinnufélag & Samlagsfelag (SVF & Samlagsfelag) - Co-operative
Comprehensive tables of these strings can be acquired – see http:www.grcdi.nl/addresses.htm
Addresses are written in the following format:
Contact name Street name[ ]number postal code[ ]TOWN NAME
For example:
The thoroughfare type is suffixed to the thoroughfare name without a space, as in, for example:
Holtagata 5
Below is a list of the most commonly occurring building and thoroughfare types:
barð borg braut byggð fell gata gerði götu grund hagi háls hjalli hlíð holt land lundur melur múli nes sel sendi siða strætii tangitún teigur torg tún vangur vegi vegur vellir
Comprehensive tables of these strings can be acquired – see http:www.grcdi.nl/addresses.htm
A table containing information about the relevant position of elements within address blocks can be acquired
hin, hinar, hinir, hinn and hio are articles in Icelandic.
Postal codes (Póstnúmer) are formed of a block of 3 digits. The first digit cannot be 0. Street addresses and post office boxes have different postal codes for the larger settlements (Akureyri, Gardabaer, Hafnarfjörður, Keflavík, Kópavogur, Reykjavík, Selfoss, Seltjarnarnes and Vestmannaeyjar).
Metadata containing postal code formatting rules, exceptions and regular expressions can be acquired
\A[1-9]\d{2,2}\Z
Note: This section last updated 30th September 2015
Refer to Exonyms in Iceland for full lists of place names in Iceland in other languages.
Alternate place name forms/postal code tables can be acquired at http:www.grcdi.nl/settlements.htm
Other language place name data can be acquired at http://www.grcdi.nl/otherlanguageplace.htm
Note: This section last updated 8th November 2011
Iceland has 8 regions (landsvæði , singular landsvæðun):
Austurland Höfuðborgarsvæði Norðurland Eystra Norðurland Vestra Suðurland Suðurnes Vestfirðir Vesturland
Icelandic telephone numbers have no area codes. Subscriber numbers have 7 digits. Mobile numbers commence 6, 7 or 8.
Every effort is made to keep this resource updated. If you find any errors, or have any questions or requests, please don't hesitate to contact the author.
All information copyright Graham Rhind 2024. Any information used should be acknowledged and referenced.