Einar

Einar sounds like someone striking flint in a quiet room. The Old Norse roots are einn, one, and arr, warrior, giving a meaning usually translated as lone warrior or one who fights alone. The name appears throughout the Icelandic sagas and belonged to several medieval earls of Orkney. Einar Jonsson the sculptor filled an Icelandic hillside with his dreamlike bronze figures in the twentieth century. In Norway today it reads traditional and slightly rugged, a hiker's name, a fisherman's name, the sort that belongs outdoors. Two syllables, a long airy first vowel, a soft r. Einar feels ancient, self-contained, and genuinely Nordic.