Embla

given name · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Embla is a given name, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and Icelandic, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Embla är ett nordiskt namn.

rarermore common
  • ISIceland1 in 413
  • NONorway1 in 5.2K
  • SESweden1 in 5.4K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈4.0K

across 6 countries

Sources
4

8 records

Official registry-verified

1 in 413

Iceland

Meaning & origin

recorded in Swedish

Embla är ett nordiskt namn. Det är hämtat från den fornnordiska mytologin där Embla och Ask är de två första människorna efter skapelsen. Betydelsen är oklar, kanske en bildning till ett ord för ’alm, almträ’. Embla har blivit populärt de senaste årtiondena.

Sources 1

  • Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Embla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden1,9030 rec.1 in 5.4K1.9K1
NO Norway1,0440 rec.1 in 5.2K3.5K1
IS Iceland8501 in 413850
DK Denmark1491 in 39K149
FI Finland221 in 253K41
AL Albania118 rec.Embla4
PL Poland21 in 19M2
US United States8
FO Faroe Islands5
DE Germany1
EE Estonialisted
NL Netherlandslisted

Roughly 1.9K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 5.4K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages

  • Norwegian Bokmål3.5K49%
  • Icelandic2.3K32%
  • Danish3795%
  • Swedish2463%
  • Norwegian1993%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Norwegian Bokmål3,54449%
Icelandic2,34632%
Danish3795%
Swedish2463%
Norwegian1993%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other recorded senses

Embla is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, The first female human in the Edda.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Latvian, apdzīvota vieta Lielbritānijā, Anglijas ziemeļaustrumos, Ziemeļjūras piekrastē

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Skandināvu mitoloģijā - pirmā sieviete uz Zemes

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time

020406080200020102020

Show as table
Embla in SSB — Navn (1880–present), Norway, 1993–2025
Yearrecords
199320
199424
199518
199626
199718
199826
199931
200026
200137
200235
200326
200422
200524
200631
200733
200827
200929
201026
201131
201223
201336
201435
201526
201631
201734
201830
201933
202043
202139
202244
202358
202453
202562

NO SSB — Navn (1880–present)33 years between 1993–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

199020002010Embla Hjulström, b. 1994Embla Kristínardóttir, b. 1995Embla Hägelmark, b. 2002Embla Matilde Njerve, b. 2007

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence

Attested in 22 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Embla
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)3.5K#773
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)1.9K#1,084
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20201.1K
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20191.1K
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20181K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20251K
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20171K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2024984
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2016979
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2023936
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2015929
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2014891

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 202 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Embla?
We estimate roughly 4.0 thousand people bear Embla (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
In which country does Embla have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.9 thousand people bear Embla in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records.
Where is Embla most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Embla is densest in Iceland — about 1 in 413 people — even though Sweden holds more of our records for it.
Is Embla a male or female name?
Embla is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Embla mean?
Recorded meaning: Embla är ett nordiskt namn.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/embla

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Embla”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Embla parses inside a full name →