You nailed it, Konrad!Totemic, I think. Asbjorn is from Proto-Norse *Ansubernuz, a u-stem, and is simply the man's name Bjorn plus a prefix As- (before about 1150 still Os, long hooked- o from u-mutation), meaning 'god', one of the aesir (the ON gods that came with the Indo-Europeans to Scandinavia about 4000BC). Remember that in ON inherited compound names, the second element is the main element, even if the second element is partly or fully obscured in ON due to linguistic loss. -Konrad |