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Strictly speaking, this is a Swedish patronymic (telling all comers that the bearer is the daughter of Sven), not a surname in the modern sense of a name handed down to children and grandchildren. (In patronymic mode, children of Judit Svensdotter and Anders Svensson would be called ____ Andersson or ____ Andersdotter; if the family switched to surname mode, they'd've been called _____ Svensson.) In most cases, maybe all?, when Swedes switched, one family at a time, from patronymics to surnames, they either turned the male patronymic into a surname for both sexes, or turned to one of the many invented names like Bergquist or military names like Gall. --Hh219 08:21, 29 April 2007 (MDT)
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