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Girl · Old Norse, through Old East Slavic
Olga
Say it: OHL-gah
Meaning
From Old Norse Helga, from heilagr 'holy, sacred', brought by the Varangian rulers of Kievan Rus.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Borne by the 10th-century princess of Kiev who was among the first of the Rus rulers to accept baptism, it became a fixed Orthodox name.
Its wave through time
Fading since the 1890s
In the United States
- 61,789 babies given this name since 1880
- At its height in 1897, about 1 in 643 girls
- 54 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- The Renaissance1400 to 1600
- The Age of Revolutions1750 to 1837
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Ольга
| Ukrainian | Olha |
|---|---|
| Polish | Olga |
| Czech | Olga |
| Old Norse | Helga |
Famous bearers
- Saint Olga of Kiev, regent of Kievan Rus
- Olga Tokarczuk, Polish novelist
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Medieval Slavic chronicles and charters
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- 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.