Entry № 3447 · Old Norse origin

Freya Freya — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ FRAY-ah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Old Norse
Meaning
"Lady, noble woman"
Syllables
1
First recorded
Ancient (Norse)

A name that means "lady, noble woman".

The name was very rare outside Scandinavia until the late twentieth century. It has surged in the 2010s and 2020s, particularly in the United Kingdom, where Freya has climbed into the top 20 girl names. The Norse-revival aesthetic — Vikings, The Witcher, the broader fascination with northern mythology — has helped, but the name's sound (two syllables, easy in any language) does most of the work.

Lady, noble woman — a Old Norse name.

The name in its native script.

Freya
Transliteration
Freya
Pronunciation
/ ˈfreɪ.ə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Freya stands.

Freya does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Freyas before her.

Real people
Freya Stark
British explorer and travel writer. One of the first European women to travel through the Arabian deserts in the 1930s.
1893 – 1993
Freya Ridings
British singer-songwriter.
born 1994
In fiction
Freyja
Goddess of love and beauty in Norse mythology.
Norse myth
Freya Mikaelson
Character in the TV series The Originals.
The CW, 2013–2018

Names connected to Freya.

The number behind Freya.

1

The Leader

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Freya reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.