Real patronymics were outlawed in 1923 in Norway (earlier in Denmark). Before that, naming tradition was that the given name (Erik) was the most important, and you'd add a place/farm name (Horsebay) and/or patronymic (Sigurdsson) and/or nickname (The Foot) if you needed to disambiguate. Given and patronymic were fixed, while farm names and nicknames could change over time. This works well in a local community, but made it hard for the central government to collect taxes and conscript expendables^Winfantrymen.

==See also==

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconym

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_modernism#Standardized_le...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_variable

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis