NorseSwedish2 syllables
Meaning: Ing’s warrior.
Ingvar
| Origin | Old Norse — Yngvarr or Ingvarr, from the divine name Ing attached to the Swedish royal line |
|---|---|
| Meaning | The god Ing (Yngvi, a byname of Freyr) + herr (army, warrior) |
| Pronunciation | ING-var, two syllables, stress in front; Swedish keeps the g audible in the cluster |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rarely given there. An ordinary Swedish name for men born between roughly 1920 and 1960, thin on the ground since |
| Variants | Yngvar (Norwegian), Ingvarr and Yngvarr (Old Norse), Ingvor and Ingemar in the wider Ing family |
| Nicknames | Inge, which doubles as a name in its own right |
| Russian form | Igor — the same name carried east by the Varangians |
History & meaning
Ing is the oldest thing in this name. He appears as Yngvi, a byname of the fertility god Freyr, and the Swedish kings of Uppsala called themselves Ynglings after him, which makes Ing less a deity you worshipped than a deity you descended from. Bolt herr onto the back — the army element that ends half the Norse warrior names — and you have Ingvarr, the god’s man under arms. Yngve preserves the same divine element standing alone.
Now the part worth knowing. When Scandinavian traders and mercenaries pushed down the Russian rivers in the ninth century they took their names with them, and Ingvarr came out the other side as Igor. It is not a lookalike or a cousin: Igor, the prince of Kyiv who died in 945, the hero of the twelfth-century poem, the Borodin opera, is this name in Slavic clothing. Back home in Sweden, Ingvar the Far-Travelled led an expedition east around 1041 that ended in disaster somewhere near the Caspian, and roughly twenty-six runestones around Lake Mälaren commemorate men who did not come back — the largest group of runestones raised for a single event anywhere.
Why parents choose it
Ingvar is plain, hard-edged and completely unmysterious to read, which puts it in a different category from the ornamental Norse names. For Swedish families it is a straightforward grandfather revival. For everyone else it has one large obstacle, and the obstacle is a furniture shop.
Middle names for Ingvar
Two firm syllables with a consonant cluster in the middle; keep the follow-up smooth: Ingvar Elias, Ingvar Mikael, Ingvar Tobias, Ingvar Rune. The middle names guide has more on consonant collisions.
Famous Ingvars
Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA at seventeen and named it after himself, his family farm and his parish: Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd. Ingvar Carlsson took over as prime minister of Sweden the night Olof Palme was shot in 1986 and served twice, seeing the country into its European Union referendum. Ingvar the Far-Travelled has the runestones, which outlast both of them.
Consider instead
Yngve is the god without the army, softer and more distinctly Swedish. Igor is this name as Russian made it, if the eastern history is the appeal. Ivar looks like a short form of Ingvar and is not — it is a separate compound, and worth choosing on its own merits.