Iceland dating app keeps people from dating relatives as population is so small

The country has fewer than 400,000 people and little immigration over the years, meaning there is a fair chance two Icelanders on a date could be on the same family tree

The simplicity of using a dating app is that there are so many potential dates to choose from within just a few clicks – but what if you end up being related to most of the ones you like the look of?

One small island nation has solved that possible problem with a clever piece of technology.

Iceland has a population of 376,248 as of 2022, with approximately 70 per cent of them living in and around the capital, Reykjavik.

It is also a country that has seen minimal immigration over the past century and with such a small pool of people bunched together in a limited space, it is inevitable that the majority of its inhabitants are related somewhere along the gene line.

To resolve the issue of Icelanders awkwardly finding out they are distant relations while dating, one company developed a practical mobile app called Íslendinga-App.

The name is a reference to the online database called Íslendingabók (also known as The Book of Icelanders) that lists in great detail every Icelander since they first arrived on the island in the 9th century and the ways in which they could all be related.

Added to the tiny population is the fact that its people rarely have family surnames as such – instead they employ a patronymic naming system that incorporates the first name of the father using either ‘dottir’ or ‘son’.

For example, singer Björk Guomundsdóttir is the daughter of Guomundur.

Sad Engineers Studios came up with the unique dating app in 2013 after it won a competition among university students to devise one to celebrate the database’s 10th anniversary.

All users have to do is type in a name to see the results of how related one person is to another.

A novelty feature is the ‘ Incest Spoiler’ where people can just bump their phones together (if they both have the app) to reveal the answer, which may or may not be desirable depending on how well the date is going.

The company used the slogan: “Bump the app before you bump into bed ”.