Freya
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Old Norse Freyja, name of the Norse goddess, ‘lady’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɹeɪə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Freya is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 23K
- USUnited States1 in 40K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Freya itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 254 (measured from records)
- 1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈25,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Old Norse Freyja, name of the Norse goddess, ‘lady’.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Freya counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Freya | 35 |
| DK Denmark | 12,649as Freja | 1 in 464 | 13K | Freya | 71 |
| SE Sweden | 11,544as Freja | 1 in 884 | 12K | Freya | 18 |
| US United States | 8,353 | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Freya | 254 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 1.9K | Freya | 201 |
| AU Australia | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 423 | Freya | 142 |
| FI Finland | 488as Freja | 1 in 11K | 570 | Freya | 9 |
| NO Norway | 444 | 1 in 12K | 1.4K | Freya | 14 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Freya is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Scottish: of Old Norse origin. Freya or Fréja was the goddess of love in Scandinavian mythology, and her name is most probably derived from a word related to Old High German frouwa ‘lady’, ‘mistress’ (German Frau). The name has for long been a traditional one in Shetland, and it is still used in Scotland. A notable modern bearer was the explorer and writer Freya Stark.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In French, Origine scandinave; prénom issu de la mythologie scandinave.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Goddess of love.
as a nameThe African book of names
Diosa del amor
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Scottish: of Old Norse origin. Freya or Fröja was the goddess of love in Scandinavian mythology, and her name seems to be derived from an element cognate with Old High German frouwa lady, mistress. The name was long a traditional one in Shetland, and is still used in Scotland. A notable modern bearer is the explorer and writer Freya Stark. Cognate: Swedish: Freja .
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Freya Starkb. 1893GBBritish travel writer (1893-1993)
- Freya von Moltkeb. 1911DEGerman writer and scholar (1911–2010)
- Isa Dick Hackettb. 1967USnot in their usual nameAmerican producer and writer for Amazon (born 1967)
- Liz Garbusb. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican film director and producer
- Freya Staffordb. 1977AUAustralian actress (born 1977)
- Freya Mavorb. 1993GBScottish actress
- Freya Tingleyb. 1994AUAustralian actress
- Freya Ridingsb. 1994GBEnglish singer, pianist and songwriter
- Freya Allanb. 2001GBEnglish actress
- Freya Andersonb. 2001GBBritish swimmer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 81 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 8.3K | #2,785 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 2.9K | #199 |
| GB United Kingdom | ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) | 2024 | 1.9K | #7 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1.9K | #1,093 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.7K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.4K | #1,349 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 953 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 540 | #1,048 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 444 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 431 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2023 | 423 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 244 | #3 |
Reference works 5
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Freya mean, and where does it come from?
- From Old Norse Freyja, name of the Norse goddess, ‘lady’. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Freya a male or female name?
- Freya is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Freya have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 25 thousand people named Freya in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled freya.
- Where is Freya most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Freya is densest in Norway — about 1 in 12 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Freya?
- A machine transcription gives /fɹeɪə/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Freya?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,353 people named Freya in 2020, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- What are other forms of the name Freya?
- In the etymology graph, Freja, Freyja and Reija are forms of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about Freya?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/freyaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Freya”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.