Kvale
surname · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named Kvale, from the dative singular of Old Norse hvdll ‘knoll’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkveɪɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kvale is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 887K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 3.2K
- TTTrinidad & Tobago≈1 in 21K
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.
- Norway (measured from records)
- Sources
- 133 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.2K (inferred from the name graph)
1,698 people
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named Kvale, from the dative singular of Old Norse hvdll ‘knoll’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kvale 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | 1,698 | 1 in 3.2K | 1.7K | Kvale | 24 |
| US United States | 375 | 1 in 887K | 412 | Kvale | 133 |
| TT Trinidad & Tobago | ≈57 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Kvale | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈47 est. | ≈1 in 808K | — | Kvale | 12 |
| BE Belgium | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 364K | — | Kvale | 1 |
| DK Denmark | 12 | 1 in 489K | 12 | — | 3 |
| IE Ireland | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 545K | — | Kvale | 1 |
1,698 people counted by SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population), counting the spelling kvåle. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ole J. Kvaleb. 1869USAmerican politician (1869-1929)
- Paul John Kvaleb. 1896USAmerican politician (1896–1960)
- Anne Johanne Kvaleb. 1924NONorwegian journalist and politician (1924–2015)
- Steinar Kvaleb. 1938NONorwegian psychologist
- Gerd Kvaleb. 1955NONorwegian professor of psychology
- Knut Kvaleb. 1957NONorwegian politician
- Gard Kvaleb. 1984NOswimmer
- Dag Kvaleb. 2000NOresearcher
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 12 sources across 5 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Kvale mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named Kvale, from the dative singular of Old Norse hvdll ‘knoll’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kvale?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkveɪɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kvale have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 1.7 thousand people named Kvale, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kvale.
- Where is Kvale most common?
- Kvale is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 3.2 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kvale?
- In Norway, the national register counted 1,698 people named Kvale, about 1 in 3.2 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kvale?
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/kvaleThe 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, “Kvale”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.