Most popular names in Sweden

Maja and Oscar at the top. 

  • One mail was "named" Maja in Swedish history - the notorious 19th century Swedish thief Lars Larsson Molin who used to disguise himself in women's clothing and was thus called Lasse-Maja.

  • The most popular names in Sweden last year were Maja and Oscar.

  • Not the Oscar that makes the name so popular among Swedes right now.... It is unclear why the statuette and the Awards were given the name Oscar.

  • According to Statistiska Centralbyrån (Statistics Sweden) 895 baby girls (that’s 1.6%) were given the name Maja. It is not the first time, however: Maja has been at the top three times the last five years. For boys, Oscar went from third to first place.

  • No, we'd like to think it is the Swedish King Oscar II that has created the name's popularity - the King succeeded Carl XV and was crowned at the time of Nordstjernan's founding in 1872. (Portrait by Gösta Florman, 1891)

  • Oscar is another name that’s been on the top ten list through the 2000’s.

  • A total of 1108 boys were named Oscar last year, replacing Eric, Victor and Axel.

  • The five most popular girls’ names:
    1. Maja
    2. Alice
    3. Julia
    4. Linnéa
    5. Wilma.

  • The five most popular boys’ names:
    1. Oscar
    2. William
    3. Lucas
    4. Elias
    5. Alexander.

  • By the way, Maja is a Germanic, Scandinavian and Slavic form of Maia from the Greek mythology, where Maia was the eldest of the Pleiades. It can also be a Swedish short form of the name Maria. In Hebrew, the name Maya is a short form of “ma’ayan”, meaning “spring” or “brook”. The name Oskar or Oscar comes from “Ossian”, the cycle of poems, which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. The source is Old Norse and was then Asgeirr, with “as” meaning god or deity and “geirr” meaning spear.