Mannsnavnet Gautulv ‒ Guttul

The region Østfold/Follo in Norway had three extremely rare male personal names, Gautulv, Sakulv and Sjøfar, the first of which is the topic of this article. The etymology of the Norse Gautulfr is the wolf from Götaland. A Swedish rune stone mentions Gautulv, and the first Swedish written medieval sources for the name precede the Norwegian ones, although most of the namesakes lived in Norway. The nobility figures far more prominently than other social groups in medieval sources, and in Norway, the first known Gautulvs and people with the patronym Gautulvsson undoubtedly belonged to the nobility. The name Gautulv is also present in five anthropotoponyms: one in Østfold, three in Vestfold on the opposite side of the Oslofjord and one in Trøndelag. Later, Guttul became the most commonly used form of this anthroponym, which probably went extinct in Norway when the farmer Guttul Hansen Søtland died in Trøgstad in Østfold in 1797.