Torvald
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Norwegian: a male given name from Old Norse
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: SSB PxWebApi, 2025
/tʊrʋɑld/(machine-generated) Norwegian · model-generated
Torvald is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country.
- SESweden1 in 9.1K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 15K
- NONorway1 in 17K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Sweden (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 17 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.1K (inferred from the name graph)
1,122 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)a male given name from Old Norse
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Torvald is read
(measured from records)Torvald is one spelling over 3 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.
- Norwegian29%
a male given name from Old Norse
as a wordrecorded as Norwegian Nynorskkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English28%
Old Norse: Thor the ruler
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Swedish13%
Torvald är ett nordiskt namn, sammansatt av → Tor- och → -vald. I den rikssvenska almanackan 17 juni och i den finlandssvenska 27 mars.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Torvald 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | 1,122 | 1 in 9.1K | 1.1K | Torvald | 5 |
| FI Finland | 375 | 1 in 15K | 1K | — | — |
| NO Norway | 330 | 1 in 17K | 1.2K | Torvald | 17 |
| NL Netherlands | 21 | 1 in 823K | 21 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 10 | 1 in 587K | 10 | — | — |
1,122 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Torvald is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Scandinavian: from an Old Norse personal name composed of the name of the god Thor ( órr ) + Old Norse valdr ruler. Variant: Thorwald. See also TOVE .
as a word
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)- Lauri Malmbergb. 1888FInot in their usual nameFinnish general (1888–1948)
- Torvald Haavardstadb. 1893NONorwegian politician (1893-1965)
- Ole Torvaldsb. 1916FInot in their usual nameFinnish-Swedish journalist and poet from Finland (1916-1995)
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)20 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Torvald mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name from Old Norse Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Torvald a male or female name?
- Torvald is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Norway (SSB) and Finland (DVV).
- What are other forms of the name Torvald?
- In the etymology graph, Thorvald is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Torvald?
- It depends on the language: in Norwegian /tʊrʋɑld/; in Swedish /tuːrvald/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people named Torvald?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Torvald, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled torvald. After it come Finland, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Torvald most common?
- Torvald is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 9.1 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Torvald?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 1,122 people named Torvald, about 1 in 9.1 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Torvald?
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/torvaldThe 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, “Torvald”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.