Hege
given name · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from Hege in Bavaria or from any of several places in Switzerland named Hegi; or a topographic name from Middle High German hac ‘enclosed wood’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Hege is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 429(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 67K
- DKDenmark1 in 105K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Norway (measured from records)
- Sources
- 214 (measured from records)
- 1 in 429 (inferred from the name graph)
12,738 people, 2025
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Hegein(measured from records)
- Middle High Germanhac(measured from records)
habitational name from Hege in Bavaria or from any of several places in Switzerland named Hegi; or a topographic name from Middle High German hac ‘enclosed wood’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hege 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 | #739 | 12,738 | 1 in 429 | 42K | Hege | 51 |
| SE Sweden | — | 152 | 1 in 67K | 152 | Hege | 9 |
| DK Denmark | — | 56 | 1 in 105K | 56 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 24 | 1 in 720K | 24 | Hege | 7 |
| FI Finland | — | 8 | 1 in 696K | 57 | — | 1 |
12,738 people counted by SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891), 2025. 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: SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Hege 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.
In Norwegian Nynorsk, a female given name from Old Norse, variant of Hæge
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, third-person singular single-possession possessive of heg
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nlg, alone, by oneself; do something alone, be alone; unique
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In ang, fence
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In men, st. hegéi; plu. hegéiga, hegéisia; some kind of black deer
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Hege Schøyenb. 1957NONorwegian actress and comedian
- Hege Peiklib. 1957NONorwegian cross-country skier
- Hege Newthb. 1966NONorwegian writer (1966-2025)
- Hege Riiseb. 1969NONorwegian football coach (born 1969)
- Hege Frøsethb. 1969NONorwegian handball player
- Hege Haukeland Liadalb. 1972NONorwegian politician
- Hege Sirib. 1973NONorwegian Sami writer and photographer
- Hege Hansenb. 1990NONorwegian association football player
- Hege Bøkkob. 1991NONorwegian speed skater
- Hege Bakken Wahlquistb. 1992NONorwegian handball player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 27 sources across 13 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Hege mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from Hege in Bavaria or from any of several places in Switzerland named Hegi; or a topographic name from Middle High German hac ‘enclosed wood’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Hege a male or female name?
- Hege 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 Hege?
- In the etymology graph, Olga, Laila and Helga are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Helle.
- In which country does Hege have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Hege, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hege.
- Where is Hege most common?
- Hege is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 429 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Hege?
- In Norway, the national register counted 12,738 people named Hege in 2025, about 1 in 429 residents.
- How common is Hege compared with other names?
- In Norway, Hege is the 739th most common given name of 25,788 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hege?
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/hegeThe 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, “Hege” — the 739th most common given name in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.