[norwegianwhale]

I am Icelander and I grew up in a fishing town near Reykjavik. When I was a small child, my greatgranddad was still alive and my mother would call him aitona. Later I learned that it was a basque word and that he came from a basque family. Small world indeed!

[jng]

Cool story! How did your greatgranddad's son & daughter's last name look like? I understand they are formed adding -son and -dotir to the father's first name, would be interesting if it's a Basque name (Iñakison? Aitordotir?).

[pezezin]

> Iñakison? Aitordotir?

I'm glad I already finished my beer, otherwise I would have spilled it over my keyboard xD (I'm Spanish too, from Cáceres)

[lastofthemojito]

Iceland has a governmental naming committee [0] that maintains a list of approved names. As I understand, obtaining exceptions has become easier, and in acknowledgement of non-binary people, there are no longer separate male and female name lists. But it's likely that in the time of OP's great-grandfather, he was given a very traditional Icelandic name (at least as his legal name).

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Naming_Committee

[mkl95]

Aitite and aitona are synonyms for grandad, the Basque language has a surprisingly large amount of dialects :-)