HÃ¥var Bauck – you probably misspelled it, so you found this page on Google! 😉
My name is HÃ¥var Bauck. Quite a handful to spell, let alone pronounce for any non-Scandinavian!
Even fellow Norwegians misspell my name from time to time, so imagine the struggle I face outside Scandinavia!
My first name – HÃ¥var – is only found in Scandinavia, and it is more common in Norway than in the neighboring countries. It is far more commonly spelt HÃ¥vard. Make that mistake, and I’ll deliberately misspell your name when I reply!
HÃ¥var means a high warrior or a high protector in the old norse language.
Most commonly, non-Scandinavians spell it Havar, as they struggle to find the Unicode Alt+229 for the ‘Ã¥’ character. In 19th-century Norwegian, ‘aa‘ was used instead of ‘Ã¥‘, so among other spelling attempts I’ve seen are Haavar, Haavard, Havard, Hevar, Hovar and Hvar.
…which is why I sometimes find it easier to let people call me Howard when I travel outside Scandinavia!
My family name – Bauck – is found in Norway, Germany and the US. Originating from Germany, my family name is held by only a few hundred people. Common misspellings are Bauk and Buck.
Why did I even bother writing this page? Because I get these questions all the time! With this page, at least, people who don’t remember how to spell my name, can find me by googling whatever they thought it was!
Anyway, welcome to bauck.com! More about me here.
Your blogs are very enjoyable to read and very well written.