Helga
Helga reached its high-water mark in 1961 at number 1,533, and has been recorded 2,209 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2020. About 870 Helgas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Helga
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,209
- Estimated living today
- 870
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1961
- Best rank
- 1,533rd
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1882
How old the living Helgas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,209 babies given the name since 1882, about 870 are alive — 39 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Old Norse
From Old Norse Helga (“holy”), a pre-Christian term, feminine form of Helgi.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Helgas
- Helga Seidler (born 1949)East German sprinter
- Helga Haase (1934–1989)German speed skater
- Helga Pedersen (born 1973)Saami politician from Norway
- Helga Mees (1937–2014)German fencer
- Helga Radtke (born 1962)German long jumper
- Helga Niessen Masthoff (born 1941)West German tennis player
- Helga Deen (1925–1943)author of a diary, discovered in 2004
- Helga Vlahović (1945–2012)Croatian journalist, producer, and television personality
People named Helga with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Helga is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Helga is most concentrated in North Dakota (13.5×), New York (7.1×), Minnesota (5.3×), Illinois (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1961
The most popular girls’ names the year Helga peaked:
Helga elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway girls | Helga | 2,337 | 66th |
| France girls | Helga | 670 | 205th |
| Ireland girls | Helga | 41 | 297th |
| Scotland girls | Helga | 7 | 450th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Helga by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 538th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Helga among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Helga | 1,797 | 2,378 |
| Finland girls | Helga | 1,057 | 1,513 |
| the Netherlands boys | Helga | — | 41 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Helga lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 863 women called Helga were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tarragona | Helga | 36 | 0.082 | 965 |
| Girona | Helga | 32 | 0.077 | 981 |
| Barcelona | Helga | 221 | 0.073 | 921 |
| Balears, Illes | Helga | 45 | 0.072 | 985 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Helga | 19 | 0.060 | 1,095 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Helga | 58 | 0.056 | 1,233 |
Listed in 29 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 23 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Helga against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.