Inge

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in German: a diminutive of the female given names Ingeborg, Ingeburg, or Ingrid, masculine equivalent Ingo or Ingolf, also diminutive of other Germanic compound names beginning with Ing(e) "the god Ing/Yngvi"; v

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ɪŋə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Inge is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 850(inferred from the name graph)
  • NLNetherlands≈1 in 1K
  • DKDenmark1 in 311

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈94,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
242 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 311 (inferred from the name graph)

Denmark

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

IngeLatin(measured from records)
잉에Hangul(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)

(i) from the Old English male personal name Ing or Inga, a shortened form of names beginning Ing-, from a Germanic fertility god; (ii) ‘person from Ing’, Essex (‘(place of) Giga’s people’)

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

How Inge is read(measured from records)

Inge is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • German53%

    a diminutive of the female given names Ingeborg, Ingeburg, or Ingrid, masculine equivalent Ingo or Ingolf, also diminutive of other Germanic compound names beginning with Ing(e) "the god Ing/Yngvi"; variant form Inga

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English17%

    (i) from the Old English male personal name Ing or Inga, a shortened form of names beginning Ing-, from a Germanic fertility god; (ii) ‘person from Ing’, Essex (‘(place of) Giga’s people’)

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    Short form of names beginning with Ing-; associated with the god Ing.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

    probably from the Germanic female personal name Inga.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    William, English prelate, author

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Dutch6.9%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Inge in Dutch.

  • Danish6.1%

    a female given name from Old Norse

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Inge 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.

Where Inge is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#203≈94,000 est.≈1 in 850—Inge190
DK Denmark—18,8741 in 31119K—4
NL Netherlands#137≈17,000 est.≈1 in 1K14KInge127
SE Sweden—16,1731 in 63116KInge38
CN China—≈15,000 est.≈1 in 94K—Inge8
NO Norway#9894,3731 in 1.3K14KInge54

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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Inge is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Danish given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, Sweden

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Ínge, Ingé

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Chile, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Inģe, Ínge, Ingé

  • Indonesian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Netherlands, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Inge

  • Estonian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Estonia, Sweden, Netherlands, United States

    Languages: Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Ingê

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Înge

59 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

100012001400160018002000Inge I of Norway, b. 1135Inge II of Norway, b. 1185Inge Lehmann, b. 1888Inge Meysel, b. 1910Inge Morath, b. 1923Inge Sørensen, b. 1924Inge Helten, b. 1950Stig Inge Bjørnebye, b. 1969Inge de Bruijn, b. 1973Inge Dekker, b. 1985

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)

InformalHallo Inge,Hi Inge, (English)

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 69 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Inge
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—19K#27
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—16K#272
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—14K#269
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—14K#335
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20254.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20202.8K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—444#2,728
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2024205—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—79#9,141
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—10#6,625
NO NorwaySSB — Navn (1880–present)20234—

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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

Where does the name Inge come from?
(i) from the Old English male personal name Ing or Inga, a shortened form of names beginning Ing-, from a Germanic fertility god; (ii) ‘person from Ing’, Essex (‘(place of) Giga’s people’) Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Inge have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 94 thousand people named Inge in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled inge.
Where is Inge most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Inge is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 311 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How do you pronounce Inge?
A machine transcription gives /ɪŋə/ (IPA) for German.
What does the name Inge mean?
In German, a diminutive of the female given names Ingeborg, Ingeburg, or Ingrid, masculine equivalent Ingo or Ingolf, also diminutive of other Germanic compound names beginning with Ing(e) "the god Ing/Yngvi"; v…
Is Inge a male or female name?
Inge 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.
What are other forms of the name Inge?
In the etymology graph, Inger, Iver and Ingolf are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Ingrid and Ingeborg.
How common is the name Inge?
In Denmark, the national register counted 18,874 people named Inge, about 1 in 311 residents.
How common is Inge compared with other names?
In Germany, Inge is the 203rd most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Inge?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/inge

The 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, “Inge” — the 203rd most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Inge parses inside a full name →