Oh, be some other name? Nah, I quite like mine.

I'm constantly asked about my name in terms of pronounciation, poularity and what it means, so I thought I'd explain here in my "me me me blog":

My name is Ingjerd, but sometimes in the UK, I stick to the more common version INGRID. People know how to pronounce this because of celebrities such as Ingrid Bergman). Ok, so my name is not the MOST common of names. It is a Norwegian name for women (you won't find it in the rest of Scandinavia) and stems from Old Norse. Despite a small peak in poularity around the post war years (must be pure patriotism!), there are only about 1412 Norwegians people with my name as first name (and only 961 with the name as the only first name).

The name "Ingjerd" is a variety of the name Ingegerd, which is what my grandmother on my father's side is called. I am named after her, but there was also a painter named Ingjerd who painted my mother and my uncle when they were kids, and that is why my mother likes the name I believe. Here is a picture of my grandparents by the way.

Other similar names include Inge (Male), Ingrid, Ingunn, Ingvild, Inger, Inga, Ingjer (just different spelling), Ingmar (Male), etc. Ingrid is the most popular version, but most of the Scandinavian names that start with ING pretty much has the same meaning.

What does it mean?

The name stems from the god Ing in Old Norse Mythology. Ing was the god of earth's fertility, and he rides the land each year to prepare it for spring planting. Ing is also referred to as Yngvi (which is where the male name "Yngve" comes from). In the muthology, Ing/Yngvi was the progenitor of the Yngling lineage, a legendary dynasty of Swedish kings from whom the earliest historical Norwegian kings in turn claimed to be descended. Also, he was the son of Odin (the chief of all gods). Read more here.

Ing-RID means "The beauty of Ing", whereas Ing-JERD stems from the protection of ING, as Jerd stems from the word "fence", "protection", "castle" or "fortress" (gjerde=fence in Norwegian)

Trivia:

- The popularity of Ingjerd on the internet is: 2.176 (where 0 = extremely rare, 6 = super popular)

- Famous people with the same name: Ingjerd Schou (a former minister and member of the Norwegian conservative party), Ingjerd Egeberg (Norwegian actress, see IMDB site), Ingjerd Østrem (or MOI as she calls herself, a singer, see Moimusic) and that's it really....

- Google gives you 244,000 results when you search for "Ingjerd" on Google - and I appear on the first page (but the lowest position though). The second page will give you 2 results that are related to me... hey hey! The benefits of a rare name! Excellent Google ranking! At the moment there are about 160 results. You don't believe me, or you're curious (stalker!)? Try searching for me yourself?

Ok, reading through this last bit, I think I've written the most narcissistic blog entry to date - was not meant to be, but hey, it's Sunday and I'm hung over. Off to bed now! Night, night!