Tor
given name · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Tor is a given name, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country, where it is the 50th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Low German to der ‘to the, at the’ in place-derived surnames.
- NONorway1 in 278◐
- SESweden1 in 1.8K
- FIFinland1 in 6.1K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈28K ●
- Sources
- 203 ●
- 1 in 278 ◐
across 9 countries
46K records
Official registry-verified
Norway
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Toor in US United States, IN India, GB United Kingdom and 11 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
Low German to der ‘to the, at the’ in place-derived surnames
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | #50 | 19,643 | 10K rec. | 1 in 278 | 49K | Tor | 125 |
| IN India | — | 6,441 | 1.6K rec. | — | 456 | Toor | 86 |
| SE Sweden | #686 | 5,710△ | 653 rec. | 1 in 1.8K | 5.7K | Tor | 56 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 2,812 | 1.7K rec. | — | listed | Toor | 87 |
| CA Canada | — | 2,774 | 2.6K rec. | — | 1 | Toor | 96 |
| PK Pakistan | — | 2,671 | 460 rec. | — | 1 | Toor | 55 |
| US United States | — | 935 | 18K rec. | 1 in 356K | 1.8K | Toor | 203 |
| AU Australia | — | 932 | 903 rec. | — | 1 | Toor | 54 |
| FI Finland | #971 | 909△ | 58 rec. | 1 in 6.1K | 2.5K | Tor | 16 |
| DK Denmark | #879 | 489△ | 198 rec. | 1 in 12K | 489 | Tor | 83 |
| NG Nigeria | — | 371 | 605 rec. | — | listed | Tor | 15 |
| MX Mexico | — | 302 | 1.4K rec. | — | — | Tor | 37 |
Roughly 20K people in Norway bear this name (about 1 in 278). 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 Bokmål49K38%
- English26K21%
- Norwegian16K13%
- Finnish8.4K7%
- Spanish3K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norwegian Bokmål | 48,539 | 38% |
| English | 26,210 | 21% |
| Norwegian | 16,466 | 13% |
| Finnish | 8,442 | 7% |
| Spanish | 3,039 | 2% |
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●
Tor is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Norwegian Nynorsk, Thor, a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, and the protection of mankind.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from Old Norse Þórr, 'thunder'
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Scandinavian: originally the name of the god of thunder in Norse mythology, Thor (Old Norse Pórr ). This was not used as a personal name during the Middle Ages. The modern name is either a late 18th-century revival of the divine name or else a vernacular development of TORD . Variant: Thor (chiefly Danish) .
as a word
In trk-pro, net for catching birds or fish
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In ko-pro, wicked, base, wild
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1945 | 465 |
| 1946 | 523 |
| 1947 | 504 |
| 1948 | 545 |
| 1949 | 493 |
| 1950 | 512 |
| 1951 | 504 |
| 1952 | 490 |
| 1953 | 519 |
| 1954 | 499 |
| 1955 | 535 |
| 1956 | 451 |
| 1957 | 487 |
| 1958 | 516 |
| 1959 | 496 |
| 1960 | 503 |
| 1961 | 509 |
| 1962 | 436 |
| 1963 | 508 |
| 1964 | 510 |
| 1965 | 502 |
| 1966 | 515 |
| 1967 | 553 |
| 1968 | 513 |
| 1969 | 487 |
| 1970 | 399 |
| 1971 | 436 |
| 1972 | 420 |
| 1973 | 400 |
| 1974 | 354 |
| 1975 | 304 |
| 1976 | 303 |
| 1977 | 317 |
| 1978 | 279 |
| 1979 | 265 |
| 1980 | 301 |
| 1981 | 266 |
| 1982 | 261 |
| 1983 | 261 |
| 1984 | 265 |
| 1985 | 228 |
| 1986 | 217 |
| 1987 | 181 |
| 1988 | 197 |
| 1989 | 195 |
| 1990 | 184 |
| 1991 | 195 |
| 1992 | 181 |
| 1993 | 136 |
| 1994 | 168 |
| 1995 | 129 |
| 1996 | 141 |
| 1997 | 138 |
| 1998 | 114 |
| 1999 | 111 |
| 2000 | 97 |
| 2001 | 80 |
| 2002 | 72 |
| 2003 | 58 |
| 2004 | 55 |
| 2005 | 75 |
| 2006 | 62 |
| 2007 | 55 |
| 2008 | 46 |
| 2009 | 44 |
| 2010 | 38 |
| 2011 | 31 |
| 2012 | 44 |
| 2013 | 46 |
| 2014 | 28 |
| 2015 | 36 |
| 2016 | 46 |
| 2017 | 34 |
| 2018 | 40 |
| 2019 | 28 |
| 2020 | 33 |
| 2021 | 29 |
| 2022 | 39 |
| 2023 | 32 |
| 2024 | 30 |
| 2025 | 22 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 81 years between 1945–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Tor Aulinb. 1866SESwedish violinist, conductor and composer (1866–1914)
- Tor Bergeronb. 1891SESwedish meteorologist (1891-1977)
- Thor Heyerdahlb. 1914NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian anthropologist and adventurer (1914-2002)
- Tor Isedalb. 1924SESwedish actor (1924-1990)
- Gunnar Möllerb. 1928DEnot in their usual nameGerman actor (1928-2017)
- Thor Bishopricb. 1963CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actor
- Jonas Sjöstedtb. 1964SEnot in their usual nameSwedish politician
- Thor Freudenthalb. 1972DEnot in their usual nameFilm director, screenwriter
- Thor Hushovdb. 1978NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian cyclist
- Thor Kristjanssonb. 1983ISnot in their usual nameIcelandic actor
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 56 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 49K | #59 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2021 | 23K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 20K | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5.7K | #570 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 2.6K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 2.5K | #952 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 935 | #12,568 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 909 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 489 | #494 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 465 | #8,508 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 465 | #8,493 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 447 | #50,535 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 · 438 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Tor?
- We estimate roughly 28 thousand people bear Tor (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Tor have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 20 thousand people bear Tor in Norway, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled tor.
- Where is Tor most common?
- Tor is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 278 people carrying it.
- How common is Tor compared with other names?
- In Norway, Tor is the 50th most common given name of 38,312 given names recorded there.
- Is Tor a male or female name?
- Tor is a male 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 Tor mean?
- Recorded meaning: Low German to der ‘to the, at the’ in place-derived surnames
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/torThe 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
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, “Tor” — the 50th most common given name in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.