Swedish boy names
Sweden has had two royal houses since it stopped being a Danish province, and both of them left their names lying around in the ordinary population: Gustav, Erik and Karl from the Vasas, Oscar and Johan from the Bernadottes. Around that core sits a set of names — Sixten, Folke, Måns, Börje — that Sweden built for itself and that stop dead at the border.
The ones English speakers already know
None of these is in the current U.S. top 100, and none of them is exotic either. They came over with the emigration of the nineteenth century and settled into American English without much resistance.
- ErikEH-rikScandinavian
Eternal ruler. The second element, ríkr, belongs to the old Indo-European family that also produced Latin rex; Erik the Holy is Sweden's medieval patron saint.
- LarsLARSSScandinavian
Man from Laurentum, the Nordic Lawrence. Latin Laurentius went north with the church and came out as one syllable.
- NilsNILSSScandinavian
Victory of the people. Nicholas with the middle removed twice over — first to Niklas, then to a bare consonant frame.
- AndersAHN-dursScandinavian
Manly, brave, from Greek andreios. The spoken form of Andreas, and the source of Andersson.
- SvenSVENSwedish
A young man, a lad, a squire. Old Norse sveinn meant a boy and then the boy who attended somebody else — a rare Norse name that boasts of nothing.
- AntonAHN-tonScandinavian
From the Roman clan name Antonius, which Rome inherited and never explained. The popular glosses — priceless, flower — have no standing at all.
The royal names: Vasa and Bernadotte
Gustav Vasa took the crown in 1523 and the Vasas held it for a century and a half. In 1810 the Swedish parliament, short of an heir, elected one of Napoleon's marshals; his descendants reign still. Both houses put their names into general circulation.
- GustavGUUS-tavSwedish
Traditionally, staff of the Goths — Gautr plus stafr, a rod of office. Gustav Vasa was elected king on 6 June 1523, which is why that is Sweden's national day.
- KarlKARLGerman
A free man of no particular rank — Germanic karlaz, the word behind English churl. The present king is Carl XVI Gustaf, both dynasties folded into one signature.
- OscarOSS-kurIrish and Old English
Deer friend, or spear of god. Bernadotte named his son in 1799 out of Macpherson's Ossian poems; that boy reigned as Oscar I and his son as Oscar II, so Sweden owes two kings to a literary hoax.
- JohanYOO-hahnScandinavian
The Lord is gracious. The John-name that stopped halfway: Denmark ground Johannes down to Jens, Sweden dropped the Latin ending and left it there.
- MagnusMAG-nusLatin and Scandinavian
Great. A Latin adjective that arrived attached to Charlemagne — Carolus Magnus — and was mistaken for part of the name. Magnus Eriksson ruled Sweden and Norway together in the fourteenth century.
- BirgerBIR-yerSwedish
Helper, one who brings to safety, from the verb bjarga. Birger Jarl is the statesman Swedish tradition credits with founding Stockholm.
- ValdemarVAL-duh-marDanish
Great ruler. Denmark's royal name, but Sweden had its own: Valdemar Birgersson, son of Birger Jarl, put on the throne as a boy and deposed by his brother in 1275.
Traditional Swedish names
The church names, the imports and the two-syllable standards that have been ordinary in Sweden for four centuries or more.
- HenrikHEN-rikScandinavian
Ruler of the home. Germanic haim is the word behind English home, so the name claims a household rather than a kingdom.
- FredrikFRED-rikSwedish
Peaceful ruler. The spelling Frederick takes east of the North Sea, and in Sweden about as remarkable as Peter is in England.
- Andreasan-DRAY-assScandinavian
Manly, courageous. Scandinavia has two Andrews and uses both — the written one and the spoken one, now separate names.
- JonasYOO-nassScandinavian
Dove. Hebrew yonah by way of the Greek spelling, which is why the Nordic form ends in an s the original never had.
- NiklasNIK-lassSwedish
Victory of the people. Sweden kept the whole staircase from Nikolaos down to Nils, and gives every step as a separate name.
- Kristofferkris-TOF-ferScandinavian
Christ-bearer. The K is the point: Nordic spelling has a C in the alphabet but treats it as a guest, and native words take K.
- VilhelmVIL-helmSwedish
Resolute protector — William with the Germanic machinery still showing, wil and helm, will and helmet, never smoothed down.
- LennartLEN-nartSwedish
Lion-strong. Swedish reshaped Leonhard, whose lion is a loanword: Germanic had no lion of its own and borrowed Latin leo.
- StenSTAYNSwedish
Stone — the Swedish word, given as a name since the Viking age and worn by the two regents who ran Sweden before it had a Vasa king.
Names Sweden made on its own
Cross into Denmark or Norway and these mostly stop. Some are Old Norse compounds only Swedish smoothed this way, some are plain Swedish nouns, and one has defeated the reference books entirely.
- SixtenSIKS-tenSwedish
Victory stone, from Old Norse Sigsteinn. The x records nothing exotic, just the ks already there. Nothing to do with the papal name Sixtus.
- FolkeFOL-kehSwedish
The people — and, in Old Norse, the host they could raise. The Folkungs held the Swedish throne from 1250 to 1364 and took their name from an ancestral Folke.
- BörjeBUHR-yehSwedish
One who saves or helps. The same verb that gave Birger, but taken down the spoken road instead of the written one.
- MånsMOHNSSSwedish
Great — Magnus after seven centuries of Swedish speech, the Latin gone and the syllables down to one. It also left the surname Månsson behind.
- MelkerMEL-kerSwedish
Traditionally, king of light. The Swedish Melchior, one of the three kings of the Christmas story, and in Sweden a completely ordinary thing to call a boy.
- AlvarAHL-varSwedish
Elf warrior. The álfar were not decoration in Norse belief — they ranked alongside the Æsir and were sacrificed to.
- ArvidAHR-vidSwedish
Eagle of the wood. Most Norse compounds bolt a noun onto a warrior word; this one puts two pieces of landscape together instead.
- StellanSTEL-lahnSwedish
Genuinely unknown. The standard Swedish reference argues for a German origin, but the name is unheard of in Germany, and no derivation has been established.
- TorgnyTORG-neeNorse
Thor's din. Gnýr is the clash of a battle or the racket of weather; attached to the thunder god it is close to onomatopoeia.
The Ynglings and the Ing names
The legendary kings at Uppsala called themselves Ynglings and claimed descent from Yngvi-Freyr. Every Swedish name beginning Ing- is downstream of that same god, which makes this the oldest layer on the page.
- YngveING-vehSwedish
From Yngvi, the older name of the god Freyr. Snorri opens Heimskringla with the Ynglings; the Elder Futhark rune ᛜ is named for the same god.
- IngvarING-varNorse
Ing's warrior. Ing was less a god you worshipped than a god you descended from, which is what the Uppsala kings claimed.
- IngemarING-eh-marSwedish
Renowned of the god Ing. Ingemar Johansson took the world heavyweight title in 1959; the director was Ingmar Bergman, and Swedes notice the missing letter.
- FrejFRAYNorse
Lord. Freyr is the god of peace, harvests and fair weather, one of the Vanir — and the deity the Ynglings traced themselves back to.
How Swedish naming works
Sweden runs two calendars. Alongside the birthday there is the namnsdag, the name day: an almanac, revised in the modern era under the eye of the Swedish Academy, that assigns given names to days of the year, so a Swedish Gustav has a date of his own quite apart from the one on his birth certificate. The other structural fact is the surnames. Swedish patronymics froze into family names in the nineteenth century, which is why so much of the country is called Andersson, Karlsson, Nilsson or Månsson — each of them a first name from this page with a genitive s and the word for son welded on.
The most Swedish thing about Swedish names is that the formal version and the spoken version both survived, and then stopped being the same name. Magnus and Måns, Birger and Börje, Andreas and Anders, Niklas and Nils: in each pair the register wrote one and the parish said the other, and Sweden now offers both as separate choices with different temperatures. That is worth knowing before you compare this page with its neighbours, because the three Nordic pages here are deliberately not interchangeable — Danish is organised around the Frederik-and-Christian royal alternation and the consonants Danish declines to pronounce, Norwegian around the Old Norse compounds Norway alone kept in everyday use, and Scandinavian gathers the stock the three countries genuinely share.