Torhild is a Norwegian feminine given name, not ordinarily a surname. It continues Old Norse Þórhildr, formed from Þór-, the name of the god Thor, and -hildr, “battle” or “strife.” “Thor’s battle” is therefore a useful literal gloss, but the compound was a personal name rather than a sentence describing its bearer. The derivation is given by name scholar Gulbrand Alhaug in Store norske leksikon.
How the Name Is Formed
Þórhildr is a two-element Old Norse name. The first character, Þ (thorn), belongs to the older spelling of Thor’s name; modern Norwegian writes the element Tor. The final -r in Þórhildr is part of the Old Norse grammatical form and is absent from modern Norwegian Torhild.
The second element, hildr, is the source of the battle or strife interpretation. It also occurs in other Germanic personal names, so the resemblance between Torhild and names of the Hild/Hilda family is not accidental. Even so, an etymological gloss should not be expanded into unsupported ideas such as “protected by Thor” or “a female warrior of Thor.” Nor does a theophoric name—one containing a divine name—prove religious office, devotion, or descent from the god.
A Medieval Runic Attestation
A concrete medieval example comes from Lödöse in Västergötland, Sweden. Lasse Mårtensson’s study of personal names in medieval Swedish runic inscriptions records Vg 266, the runic form þorilte͡r cut on a wooden bowl and dated to 1250–1300. He normalizes the name as runic Nordic Þōrhildr and Old West Norse Þórhildr. This is a dated attestation of the name, not a claim that it is the first Torhild ever recorded. See Mårtensson, *Personnamnen i de medeltida svenska runinskrifterna*, p. 138.
Mårtensson finds this to be the only Torhild attestation in his medieval Swedish runic corpus and notes that the name was better represented in West Norse material. Earlier scholars offered different explanations for its scarcity in Swedish evidence: one connected decline with the name’s pagan first element after Christianization, while another observed that Þór- largely remained popular. The evidence therefore supports a West Norse association, but not a simple, settled account of why the name was rare in medieval Sweden.
Norwegian Variants and Related Forms
Store norske leksikon groups the following Norwegian spellings and shortened forms with Torhild: Thorhild, Thoril, Thorild, Thorill, Torhill, Toril, Torild, and Torill. These are useful related-name forms, but they should not be treated as interchangeable in every context. Torhild is the modern Norwegian form closest to the full two-element name, while forms such as Toril and Torill have their own modern usage histories.
For historical research, preserve the spelling in the source. A medieval normalized form such as Þórhildr, the runic spelling on the Lödöse object, and a modern civil-register spelling are different kinds of evidence. Similar spelling can suggest a name relationship; it does not by itself identify the same person or family.
Use in Modern Norway
Alhaug reports that in 2022, 2,479 women in Norway had Torhild as their only given name or as the first of multiple given names. The wider Torhild variant group had a marked mid-20th-century rise: during 1945–1954, Torhild, Toril, Torill, and Torild together were given to 2.4 percent of girls, with only the Anne and Inger name groups ranking higher. That figure describes the combined variant group, not Torhild alone. Alhaug connects the particular popularity of Toril to Otto Nielsen’s song about Toril, written near the end of the Second World War.
Norway’s name day for Torhild is 16 June. For a current bearer count, consult Statistics Norway’s official name search, which is updated annually from the National Population Register; totals can change from one release to the next.
Given Name, Not Family Line
Norwegian reference works classify Torhild as a feminine given name. If it appears in a database’s surname field, the field placement alone does not establish a hereditary Torhild surname; the original record and its column headings must decide that question. Likewise, two people named Torhild are not shown to share ancestry merely because their given names have the same Old Norse origin.
References
- Gulbrand Alhaug, “Torhild (kvinnenamn)”, Store norske leksikon, updated 28 May 2024.
- Lasse Mårtensson, *Personnamnen i de medeltida svenska runinskrifterna*, Institutet för språk och folkminnen, Uppsala, 2024, especially p. 138. ISBN 978-91-89767-16-4.
- Statistics Norway, “Names: Statistics on the names of all registered inhabitants of Norway”, updated 28 January 2026.