Talk:Stephen Gyllenhaal

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[edit] Gyllenhaal means 'Golden-hall'!?

It is claimed in the article that Gyllenhaal (literary) means 'Golden-hall'. Being swedish, I can say that this can't be true. The part Gyllen indeed translates as 'Golden'. But I don't agree that haal translates as 'hall'. In fact, the swedish word for 'hall' is the same as in English, namely hall. Thus, English 'Golden-hall' would be Gyllenhall in Swedish, which is not the case here.

So, what does haal mean then? Actually, there are three possible alternatives here depending on how to interpret the aa and the l (the spelling conventions in Swedish has changed quite a lot since this noble family name was invented). The name may mean: (1) hole (cf. Swe. hål, often spelled haal centuries ago), (2) hard (cf. Swe. hård which still is pronunced like hål in many dialects in Sweden and centuries ago in most of Sweden) or (3) slippery (cf. Swe. hal). The most probable here is (2). Why? Remember that Nils Haal, who was ennobled to Gyllenhaal, was a lieutenant and thus a mid-ranked soldier. In Sweden, low- and mid-ranked soldiers often had names based on adjectives referring to desired soldier properties (e.g. Rask lit. 'Quick', Hård lit. 'Hard', Stark lit. 'Strong', Modig lit. 'Brave' etc.).

Thus, we conclude that Gyllenhaal literary means Golden-hard - an ennobled version of Haal (written Hård in standardised Modern Swedish) which literary means 'Hard'. When the noble name was formed in the 17th century, it was probably pronunced [ˈdʒʏlːənˌhɔːɽ] (see this link for details concerning the phonetical alphabet used.)

Jens Persson jepe2503 [at] hotmail [dot] com (130.242.128.85 19:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC))

[edit] A liitle too much family pride

The Gyllenhaal clan have been working overtime on this one. I think I'll tone it down a little CallMeHenry 14:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC).