Iceland is one of few countries where the telephone directory is sorted alphabetically by first name. This is by and large because Icelandic people simply do not have family names.

By far the most common case is that your ‘last name’ is made up of your father's first name and a suffix that signals whether you are a son or a daughter. For instance, ‘Páll (Paul), son of Eiríkur (Eric)’ and ‘Helga, daughter of Eiríkur’.

An example. Björn and Helga are brother and sister. Their parents are Jón and Elsa. Björn's full name will be ‘Björn Jónsson’ (John's son) and his sister will write her name ‘Helga Jónsdóttir’ (John's daughter).

If in turn Björn marries and has a son and a daughter, their second names will be ‘Björnsson’ and ‘Björnsdóttir’ respectively. If his sister Helga marries, her children will make their second names from the first name of her husband.

This means that members of the same family all have different ‘surnames’, and it would be pointless to have a phone book listed by last name, as almost everyone's last name is really the father's first name.

Instead, the Icelandic telephone book is listed according to people's first names, as this is the name callers are most likely to know. If you then also know the first name of the person's father, you have an even better chance of finding them in the directory. Best of all is if you know where the person lives, in which case you go by first name and address.