View source for Denmark Names, Personal

=== Language and Spelling Reforms ===
Denmark has had three significant spelling reforms: 1872, 1889, and 1948. Some additional changes were made in 1892. In 1872 the use of double vowels in some words, such as ''huus'' and ''steen'' was discontinued. It was also recommended that the letters ø and ö be used to represent the sounds of ø and œ. This was discontinued in 1892. These two forms were sometimes used interchangeably based on the font used in the printed text. These two letters appeared together in some dictionaries until 1918. In 1889 a executive order was issued to compile a dictionary for use in public and private schools containing the latest rules for orthography. The first edition of Viggo Saaby's ''Dansk Retskrivningsordbog'' was published in 1891.

In 1948 the letter ''Å'' was borrowed from Norwegian replacing ''Aa''. At this time it was placed first in the alphabet, and in 1955 it was moved to being the last letter. ''Aa'' is still used in place names, such as Aabenraa<ref>FamilySearch Standardizes ''Aa'' as ''&#0197;'' in the [https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog FamilySearch Catalog] and [https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/ FamilySearch Places].</ref>, and personal names. At this time the practice of using initial capital letters for all nouns was was discontinued and limited to proper nouns only. The spelling of modal verbs using ''nd'' and ''ld'' (such as ''kunde, vilde'') was changed to drop the ''d'' and replace it with a double consonant ''nn, ll'' (''kunne, ville'').