How to find rare girl and boy names

Recently, an email came from Laila, who remembers her late mother, and her beautiful name:

“My mother was named Flonia and there is no one else with this name in Norway. She was born in 1921 and died in 1972. Too bad this name is unused!”, writes Laila. And we totally agree with her on that.

Many go to great lengths to find a unique name for their little one, and search with light and lantern, whether it is among celestial bodies, celebrities, in the animal kingdom or among the world’s cities. When name enthusiast Kjetil Bergman Olsson came out with the book Names in Norway in 2023, he had a separate chapter devoted to names by seasons and months.

In his work, he found that 290 Norwegian women are named Vår, and draws the conclusion that a good number of them were probably born in the spring. The variants Wår and Vaar are currently used by 4 and 22 women respectively.

No one got these names last year

Winter and Spring

If we go to the other end of the temperature scale, we find that a total of 13 men have Winter as their only first name, in addition to 16 men and 7 women bearing the English Winter as their surname.

A beloved season for berry pickers and mushroom pickers is autumn. If you look at the name Høst, it is not a completely unusual middle name, but in Statistics Norway’s statistics we have not been able to find anyone called Høst as a first name.

This was previously also the case with the female name Sommer, which has now started to climb the charts as a first name. In Norway, in 2023 there were five women named Sommer, while a total of 21 were named Summer, i.e. the American/English variant.

Named by months

If you break the seasons down into months, there are several names to notice. May and August, for example, have around two thousand carriers each. Mai, the beautiful and gentle, also has a masculine form in Hungarian Majus, worn by 52 men in Norway.

You don’t have to be born in August to be called August. According to author Bergman Olsson, August is the month name that is given most often, regardless of the month of birth. At the other end of the scale, we find that as many as 120 Norwegian women/girls are named April, and many of them were born in the month of April, we are to believe Bergman Olsson. The French variant Avril is immediately more rare, and has 11 Norwegian carriers.

If you let the summer breeze sweep through your hair, we find yet another name inspired by birth months, namely June. 452 women have the mild summer month as their name, while 38 are named after Juno, who was Jupiter’s wife and goddess of mothers, marriage and childbirth.

That’s why she disappeared

If you go back a little, to the gentle approach of spring, we land in the month of March. The name Mars is used as the first name of nine people in Norway, so here there are opportunities for those who want something more unique and want to name their child after the god of war Mars.

Juli is associated with flowering, bathing and lazy days, and 78 women have Juli as their only first name. Avarten Julie is worn by a total of 13,784 women, according to Statistics Norway. Both Julie and Julia derive from the Roman Julius. But even if the names can make us think of summer, many of the bearers were born at Christmas, we are to believe author Bergman Olsson.

Light and darkness

Darkness may not be the first thing you think of when you have a child. Then there are also between zero and four people in Norway whose first name is Januar. But if we look in Statistics Norway’s statistics, we find that 18 Norwegians are called Janus and 12 are called Janvier, a French variant of Januar.

If we look at the shortest month of the year, February, we find no statistical evidence that anyone is called this. It must be mentioned here that Statistics Norway’s statistics do not provide statistics on names that have four or fewer users, for privacy reasons.

But February also offers flashes of light, such as Valentine’s Day. The name Valentin is carried by 307 men, as well as 684 women in the form Valentina.

Another spring festival is the Swedes’ Valborg, with bonfires and parties on the night of May 1. The celebration is in memory of the holy Valborg. Here at home, we probably associate Valborg most with Kjell’s girlfriend in the Olsenbanden, but many of the grandparent names are making a comeback, and there are close to 400 who have Valborg as their first name.

Who actually discovered America?

Well into spring comes Easter – Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox, in case you had forgotten – and the yellow season has given us the French name Pascal, from the late Latin Paschalis meaning Easter. Furthermore, in June we celebrate Sankthans, or Jonsok, in memory of John the Baptist, a well-established name in Norway.

In the autumn, Americans celebrate Columbus Day, in memory of Christopher Columbus discovering America. Here at home it has been read out and agreed that it was Leiv Eriksson who discovered America, and a thousand and ten thousand men respectively are then also called Leiv and Leif.

We shall not enter into any disputes – the National Museum received enough opposition when in 2023 they chose to take down Christian Krogh’s painting of Leiv Eriksson discovering America, on the grounds that it could be perceived as colonialist. It is certain that 77 men have Christofer as their first name, while the spellings Christoffer and Kristoffer have respectively five thousand and ten thousand proud owners.