Well, yes, there’s an app for that too.
In Iceland.
The new “incest prevention” app is a
debatably handy new byproduct of a large online genealogical database about the
inhabitants of Iceland called Íslendingabók(translated
as The Book of Icelanders). The
app allows users to bump their phones together and instantly find out whether
or not they are related.
“Bump in the app before you bump in bed,”
is the totally awesome tag line for the new product, created by a group of
Software Engineering students at the University of Iceland named Sad Engineer
Studios.
Sleeping with a relative is more of an
issue in Iceland than most other territories due to the country’s small
size—Iceland has just 320,000 residents, compared with more than 300 million
people in the U.S.—as well as the lack of immigration and the peculiar way that
surnames are constructed in the country.
Your surname is not passed down through
the generations as it is in most Western cultures. Instead, your surname is
your mother or father’s first name, with the word “son” or “dottir” suffixed.
So, to use Iceland’s most famous export
as an example, all that the surname of Björk Guðmundsdóttir tells us about her
heritage is that her mother’s first name
was Guðmund. Information which, if exchanged in a bar late at night when Sigur
Ros is playing really loudly, may not give many hints as to exact lineage or
potential problems at the next family get-together. People are listed in the
phone book by their first names in Iceland.
One of the developers of the new app,
Arnar Freyr Aðalsteinsson, explained: “Icelandic names differ from most current
Western name systems as our surname reflects the immediate father (or in some
cases mother) of the child and not the historic family lineage. For example, my
last name indicates that I’m the son of Aðalsteinn (my father’s name) so
therefore I am Aðalsteinsson.”
“The idea for the incest-prevention
feature comes from our culture,” he said. “Accidentally sleeping with a
relative has been a running joke in Icelandic culture for a while.”
Arnar said he got involved with the project
when the Book of Icelanders ran a contest to create a mobile experience using
the database. “We wanted to find new creative uses for the information
contained in the database. Our main goal with the app was to implement all
existing features of Íslendingabók and also to add some new and exciting
features.”
Yes, “exciting” sort of covers it.
“The big feature we introduced was the
Bump,” said Arnar. “This feature enables users to find out how two people are
related by bumping two phones together and instantly seeing how those two are
related. A small, but much talked about feature is the loosely translated
‘Incest Prevention Alarm’ that users can enable through the options menu, which
notifies the user if the person he’s bumping with is too closely related.”
The app is proving popular. So far, 4,000
people have downloaded the app from the Google Play Store.
However, Arnar is keen to point out that
these are not all likely to be people seeking to prevent kissing their cousins.
“In addition to the already available
search function where you can search for and find out how you are related to
any other Icelander, we added a birthday calendar to make sure you don’t forget
your relative’s birthday. The app even reminds you on the date to guarantee you
won’t forget it.”
Only problem is, it might be
telling you your girlfriend’s birthday too.
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