Freya
Feminine · “lady”
Freya is the name of the great goddess of the Norse pantheon, written down in the Icelandic Eddas of the thirteenth century and carried in Scandinavian memory long before that. In English it comes out in two open syllables that end on a vowel, easy to call across a yard. It reached wide English-speaking use only in recent generations, though the word behind it is well over a thousand years old.
How old is the name Freya?
Freya first appears in US birth records in 1931 — 94 years ago. The typical Freya is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 19,500 people named Freya are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Freya most popular?
Freya peaked in 2022, reaching #129 nationally. Today it ranks #176, 47 places below that high. See the whole 2022 chart.
Freya appears on these lists:
- The steadiest names in America
- Five-letter names, the comfortable middle
- Names that begin and end with the same letter
- Goddess and muse names
- Scandinavian names, cool by design
- Norse mythology names
- all guides
Works in Scandinavian families too:
Where it comes from
From Old Norse freyja (title, 'lady') to Freya
The story of Freya
The name belongs first to Freyja, the Norse goddess associated with love, fertility, gold and the slain, described in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda as riding in a chariot drawn by cats and owning the necklace Brísingamen. Her name is a common noun pressed into service: Old Norse freyja, 'lady', from the same Germanic root that gives freyr, 'lord'. Scandinavians revived it as a given name during the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for Norse myth and medieval literature, and the spelling Freja became ordinary in Denmark and Sweden. The Freya spelling took hold across Britain — very strongly in Scotland — and reached the United States later, where the English-speaking world's twentieth-century travel writer Freya Stark had already put it in print.
Meaning
lady, noblewoman
Old Norse Freyja is the feminine counterpart of freyr, 'lord' — a title rather than a personal name in origin.
Cultural footprint
Freya Allan (b. 2001) — The Witcher's Ciri
Freya Stark (b. 1893) — Intrepid explorer of Arabia who wrote 24 travel books
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Old Norse freyjatitle, 'lady'
- FreyjaNorse goddess
- Freja
- Freya
Related forms: Freyja · Freja · Freja · Frøya · Freia · Freija
Pronouncing Freya
FRAY-uh
Two syllables, rhyming with 'player'. The common slip is FREE-uh, and the Scandinavian spellings Freja and Freyja are said the same way as Freya.
Nicknames for Freya
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1931
- Most girls named
- 20222,183 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #129reached in 2022
- Change vs 2023
- −15.8%1,746 in 2025, from 2,074
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Freya in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Freyja in Icelandic / Old Norse — same name
- Freja in Danish — spelling variant
- Freja in Swedish — spelling variant
- Frøya in Norwegian — related form
- Freia in German — spelling variant
- Freija in Finnish — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from National Records of Scotland, Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada. Sources
Freyas among us
people named Freya are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 921 born in 2025 was named Freya
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Kellie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Freya's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kellie climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kellie's path sketches the road Freya is walking now.
Freya sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Freya is headed
Freya should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Freya beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Freya in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two clear syllables and a spelling that English readers say correctly on sight most of the time.
- Charts in Scotland, England and Wales, and Canada as well as the US, so it travels without needing explanation.
- A documented written record going back to the thirteenth-century Icelandic Eddas, and a plain meaning parents can state in one word.
- Near-identical forms exist across Scandinavia and Germany — Freja, Freyja, Frøya, Freia.
- Freya, Freja and Freyja all sound alike, so expect to spell it aloud fairly often, and to see the other two on forms and in books.
- FREE-uh is a frequent first guess from people who have only read the name, not heard it.
- The mythological link is strong and specific — a goddess of love, war and the dead — which some families welcome and others would rather not carry.
- The wave in the US is very recent, so most Freyas here are children; there are few adults with the name to make it feel ordinary yet.
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What they receive
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Freya
Feminine · #176 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Freyas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 19,500 people named Freya are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Freya in 2025?
- Freya ranks #176 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,746 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Freya?
- About 1 in every 921 US girls born in 2025 was named Freya — 1,746 in all.
- Will my child share the name Freya with classmates?
- Freya will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Freya
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Isabel#176 · Callie#175 · Daphne#178 · Ariella#174 · Ruth#173 · Lilah#179 · Amaya#180 · Vivienne#172
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Freya? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Freya and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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