Frej

History & meaning

Freyr is the god of peace, fair weather, harvests and increase — one of the Vanir rather than the Æsir, son of Njörðr and brother of Freyja, given rule over Álfheim as a teething gift. He owns Skíðblaðnir, the ship that always has a following wind and folds up small enough to carry, and Gullinbursti, the boar with bristles of gold. In Skírnismál he sees the giantess Gerðr from Odin's high seat and gives away his sword to win her, which is why at Ragnarök he meets the fire-giant Surtr unarmed. Adam of Bremen, writing about 1070, describes his image standing in the temple at Uppsala and says the Swedes sacrificed to him at weddings. The kings of the Ynglinga line claimed him as an ancestor.

The name itself has a twist that sets it apart from the rest of the Norse pantheon. Freyr is not really a name: it is the common noun "lord", a title, and the god's older personal name appears to be Yngvi — the sources sometimes give both at once, Yngvi-Freyr. So calling a boy Frej is less like calling him Thor than like calling him Lord, which is either a strange thing to do to a child or a rather good one, depending on the day. That same divine name travels on in ordinary Scandinavian form through Yngve and Ingvar, both of which have been men's names continuously since the Viking Age, while bare Frej is a modern arrival — the same pattern set out on the Thor page.

Why parents choose it

It is one clean syllable that English speakers can read at sight, and it means peace and plenty in a mythology otherwise famous for hammers and wolves. The reservation is that English ears may hear "fray", the noun for a brawl, which is close to the opposite of what the god stands for. In Sweden this problem does not arise at all.

Middle names for Frej

A single open syllable can take almost any weight after it: Frej Mattias, Frej Oskar, Frej Valentin, Frej Ludvig. Avoid middle names beginning with a hard F or a vowel, which blur the join. The middle names guide has the full approach.

Famous Frejs

No famous bearer to name, and pretending otherwise would be filler. The name's presence is archaeological and literary instead: the small eleventh-century bronze figure from Rällinge in Södermanland, usually identified as Freyr, is one of the few surviving images of a Norse god made by people who believed in him; the Ynglinga saga makes him the founder of a Swedish royal line; and Sweden has kept the name on ships and sports clubs ever since. In Iceland, Freyr is simply a name men are given.

Consider instead

Yngve is literally the same god under his other name and has been an ordinary Swedish and Norwegian name for centuries. Ingvar carries the same divine element in a sturdier frame. If it is the peaceable sound you are after rather than the theology, Folke is Swedish and gentle and means nothing more alarming than "people".