Terje
given name · Latin script
Meaning: a male given name from Old Norse, variant of Torgeir
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tɛrə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Terje is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 288(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 13K
- DKDenmark1 in 61K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 11 (measured from records)
- 1 in 288 (inferred from the name graph)
18,994 people, 2025
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)
a male given name from Old Norse, variant of Torgeir
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Terje 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 | 18,994 | 1 in 288 | 70K | Terje | 11 |
| SE Sweden | 815 | 1 in 13K | 815 | — | 1 |
| US United States | 177 | 1 in 1.9M | 159 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 97 | 1 in 61K | 97 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 48 | 1 in 116K | 214 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | 29 | 1 in 596K | 29 | — | — |
18,994 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); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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)
Terje is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Terje är en yngre norsk dialektal form av Torgeir, ett nordiskt namn, fornvästnordiskt Þorgeirr, sammansatt av → Tor- och → -ger. Terje kan också vara ett estniskt kvinnonamn.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, männl. Vom. norwegischer Herkunft, jüngere Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Norwegian: vernacular form of Torgeir (see TORGER ).
as a word
In efi, honour
as a wordEfik 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)
- Hariton Pushwagnerb. 1940NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian artist (1940-2018)
- Terje Rød-Larsenb. 1947NONorwegian diplomat
- Terje Rypdalb. 1947NONorwegian jazz guitarist and composer
- Jonas Fjeldb. 1952NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian musician
- Dag Terje Andersenb. 1957NONorwegian politician
- Terje Haugeb. 1965NONorwegian football referee
- Terje Langlib. 1965NONorwegian cross-country skier
- Terje Aaslandb. 1965NONorwegian politician
- Terje Håkonsenb. 1974NONorwegian snowboarder
- Todd Terjeb. 1981NONorwegian DJ, songwriter, and record producer
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 28 sources across 16 countries.
Reference works 2
- 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 Terje mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name from Old Norse, variant of Torgeir Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Terje?
- A machine transcription gives /tɛrə/ (IPA) for Norwegian.
- Is Terje a male or female name?
- Terje is a male 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 Terje?
- In the etymology graph, Terhi, Torgeir and Torger are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Terje have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 19 thousand people named Terje, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled terje.
- Where is Terje most common?
- Terje is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 288 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Terje?
- In Norway, the national register counted 18,994 people named Terje in 2025, about 1 in 288 residents.
What do you want to know about Terje?
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/terjeThe 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, “Terje”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.