Helga

given name · Latin script

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

Helga is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In Iceland it is the 27th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Old Norse name from heilagr meaning “holy, blessed”.

rarermore common
  • ISIceland1 in 133(measured from records)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 476
  • ATAustria≈1 in 678

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)

≈170,000 people, est.

Sources
280 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 133 (inferred from the name graph)

Iceland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Old Norse name from heilagr meaning “holy, blessed”.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Helga 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 Helga is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#111≈170,000 est.≈1 in 476—Helga199
AT Austria#115≈13,000 est.≈1 in 678236Helga109
US United States—7,0521 in 47K7KHelga280
SE Sweden—3,8891 in 2.6K3.9KHelga42
NL Netherlands#743≈3,000 est.≈1 in 5.8K1.8KHelga60
NO Norway#5392,7311 in 2K8.5KHelga61
IS Iceland#272,6451 in 1332.9KHelga90

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); 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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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)

Helga is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Argentina, United States, Chile

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Helgå, Hélga

  • Finnish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Estonia, Finland, Sweden

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Helgå

  • Russian given name21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Poland, Czechia, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Polish, Czech

    Also written Хельга, Hel'Ga, Хелга, Гельга, Khelga

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Canada

    Also written Hélga

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Helgå

  • Indonesian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Malaysia, Peru

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Helga

  • Croatian given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Serbia, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Хелга, Khelga, Helgã

58 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Helga 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.

  • From an Old Norse woman’s personal name, a derivative of the adjective heilagr ‘prosperous’, ‘successful’ (from heill ‘hale’, ‘hearty’, ‘happy’). It was introduced to England before the Conquest, but did not survive long. It has been reintroduced to the Englishspeaking world in the 20th century from Scandinavia and Germany. See also pOlga.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • Nordic: ‘prosperous’ or ‘holy’. ~Helge 3 Nordic: ‘prosperous’ or ‘holy’.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In German, a female given name from Old Norse Helga

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

  • In German, gegen Ende des 19. Jh.s entlehnter weibl. Vom. nordischer Herkunft, weibliche

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In Swedish, Helga är en feminin form av → Helge. En rysk form är → Olga. I den rikssvenska almanackan 21 november och i den finlandssvenska 31 maj.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

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)

1930194019501960Helga Feddersen, b. 1930Helga Liné, b. 1931Helga Nowotny, b. 1937Helga Hernes, b. 1938Helga Masthoff, b. 1941Helga Vlahović, b. 1945Helga Anders, b. 1948Helga Seidler, b. 1949Helga Lindner, b. 1951Martina Hellmann, b. 1960

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 88 sources across 46 countries.

Reference works 5

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 are other forms of the name Helga?
In the etymology graph, Olga, Olha and Laila are forms of the same name in other languages; Hege is a recorded short or pet form.
What does the name Helga mean, and where does it come from?
Old Norse name from heilagr meaning “holy, blessed”. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
Is Helga a male or female name?
Helga 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 Helga have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 168 thousand people named Helga in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled helga.
Where is Helga most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Helga is densest in Iceland — about 1 in 133 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Helga?
In the United States, the national register counted 7,052 people named Helga in 2020, about 1 in 47 thousand residents.
How common is Helga compared with other names?
In Germany, Helga is the 111th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Helga?

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

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Helga” — the 111th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Helga parses inside a full name →