Norse1 syllableMythology
Meaning: thunder.
Thor
| Origin | Old Norse — Þórr, from Proto-Germanic *þunraz |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Thunder — literally the noun, not a poetic gloss on it |
| Pronunciation | THOR, with the th of thin; Norwegian and Swedish Tor is TOOR |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and uncommon in America; Tor is ordinary in Norway |
| Variants | Tor, Tore, Thore (Scandinavian); Þór (Icelandic); Tór (Faroese) |
| Nicknames | None needed — one syllable leaves nothing to cut |
| Weekday | Thursday, from Old English þunresdæg, the day of Thunor — the English cognate of Þórr |
History & meaning
Most names mean something at one remove. Thor does not: Þórr is simply the Old Norse word for thunder, a straight descendant of Proto-Germanic *þunraz and the same word as English thunder, German Donner and Dutch donder. The god who carries it is the red-bearded defender of gods and farmers, hauled across the sky by two goats, armed with the hammer Mjöllnir and permanently at war with giants and with the serpent coiled around the world. Judging by hammer amulets, farm names and the sheer weight of him in the sources, he was the most widely worshipped god in the Norse world.
Here is the honest part, and it applies to every god name on this site. Viking-Age parents did not hand a child the god's name whole. They built with it. Thor-compounds are the largest single group of personal names in the Icelandic settlement records — Thorbjorn (Thor's bear), Torsten (Thor's stone), Torgny (Thor's din), Thorvald, Thorfinn, Thorgeir. Bare Thor as a given name is a modern development, largely nineteenth-century in origin, and in Norway today Tor is often really a short form of Torbjorn or Torstein rather than an invocation of the god. That does not make it a bad choice. It makes it a modern one, and worth knowing about.
Why parents choose it
One syllable, one hard consonant at each end, and a meaning that needs no explaining in any language a reader is likely to speak. It is also unusually portable: Thor survives intact in English, German, Spanish and Japanese mouths, which very few Norse names manage.
Middle names for Thor
A blunt single syllable wants length after it: Thor Alexander, Thor Emmanuel, Thor Nikolai, Thor Everett. Avoid a second one-syllable name unless the surname is long. The middle names guide has the full method.
Famous Thors
Thor Heyerdahl sailed the balsa raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 1947; Thor Hushovd won the road world championship for Norway in 2010. The element thorium was named for the god by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1828. And then there is Marvel, which has published Thor since 1962 and put Chris Hemsworth in the role since 2011 — for an English-speaking child born now, that is the first association anyone will make, and it will not fade in the next twenty years.
Consider instead
If what appeals is the god rather than the blunt sound, Thorbjorn is what a Viking would actually have been called, and Torsten is the same idea in a gentler shape. If you want Norse weight with less superhero attached, Odin carries the older, stranger god.