Names and statistics

Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr. sigvald at duckburg.dk
Sat Aug 30 02:22:25 CEST 2003


Hi all!

Recently statistics has been used in the debate about whether Horst can be
seen as a Swedish name or not. Some people have also pointed out the fact
that my first name Sigvald is not a very common name in Sweden nor in
Norway. I have a few extra facts and comments to add to those comments:

a) According to Swedish statistics previous given by Michael and equal
Norwegian statistics that I have found on the internet there are:
462 men named "Sigvald" in Norway
250 men named "Sigvald" in Sweden
---------------------------------
Thus 712 men are named "Sigvald" in Norway + Sweden

So OK, Sigvald is *not* a common Scandinavian name, but it is of Norse
origin so there is no doubt that it is a *typical* Scandinavian name. I
guess you would only very rarely find it outside Scandinavia.


b) According to Swedish statistics previous given by Michael and equal
Norwegian statistics that I have found on the internet there are:
46 men named "Horst" in Norway
462 men named "Horst" in Sweden
---------------------------------
Thus 476 men are named "Horst" in Norway + Sweden

Thus Sigvald is a more common male name in Norway + Sweden than is Horst.


I don't know why the name Horst occurs so much more frequent in Sweden than
in Norway, but a good guess would be that it is because Sweden wasn't
invaded by the Germans from 1940 to 1945. Just remember that the Swedish
king from 1950 to 1973 was named Gustav 6 Adolf. I can't imagine that a
Norwegian or a Danish king could possibly have used the name Adolf after
WW2.

PS! Please notice that I don't intend to offend anyone with anything written
in this posting.

Sigvald


More information about the DCML mailing list