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Girl · Old Norse
Helga
Say it: HEL-gah
Meaning
From Old Norse heilagr 'holy, sacred'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Common from the Viking age onward; the Rus' adopted it as Olga.
Its wave through time
Fading since the 1890s
In the United States
- 2,208 babies given this name since 1882
- At its height in 1899, about 1 in 8,000 girls
- 5 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The Viking and Anglo-Saxon Age700 to 1100
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
| Russian | Olga |
|---|
Famous bearers
- Olga of Kiev, saint, whose name is a Slavic form of Helga
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- The Icelandic sagas and other Old Norse literature
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.