Surname Origin
First Name Entry

Ylva

A Swedish feminine given name meaning “she-wolf,” developed from an old Nordic byname and revived as a modern first name.

Last updated: 2026-08-10

Ylva is a Swedish feminine given name with the literal etymological meaning “she-wolf” or “female wolf.” Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore (Isof) describes it as an old Nordic byname derived from Swedish ulv, “wolf.” It later came into use as an ordinary first name.

The meaning is well supported; the symbolism sometimes attached to it is not. The name does not linguistically mean “brave,” “independent,” or “warrior,” and it cannot demonstrate Viking ancestry or a relationship between present-day bearers.

The Word Behind the Name

In his 2024 study of personal names in medieval Swedish runic inscriptions, professor of Nordic languages Lasse Mårtensson notes that Old Swedish ylva was a common noun meaning “she-wolf.” The corresponding Old West Norse form ylfa had the same meaning. Modern Swedish ulv and the masculine personal name Ulf belong to the same wolf-word family.

That language path explains the name more precisely than simply calling Ylva a translation of Ulf. Isof treats Ylva as a derivative of the animal word and as an original byname: an additional name used alongside a person's principal name. A medieval byname could be descriptive, admiring, mocking, or otherwise allusive. Mårtensson also records a hostile figurative sense, “evil woman,” for the Old Swedish common noun, so the intended force of any individual medieval byname cannot be recovered from the word alone.

Medieval Evidence: Probable, but Not Certain

The familiar historical example is Ingrid Ylva, mother of the Swedish statesman Birger Jarl, who died in 1266. Both Isof's name entry and Sten Engström's biography of Birger Jarl in *Svenskt biografiskt lexikon* identify her by that name. This is evidence for Ylva as a byname, not evidence that it was already a routinely bestowed feminine first name. Mårtensson further cautions that Ingrid's byname is preserved only in a copy made in the mid-1400s, roughly two centuries after her lifetime.

A more direct but still uncertain medieval first-name candidate appears at Börstig church in Västergötland. A runic inscription designated Vg 201, cut on a sandstone block and dated to 1200–1250, contains the sequence transliterated as ylfa abraham. In *Personnamnen i de medeltida svenska runinskrifterna*, Mårtensson prefers to read this as two personal names, Ylva and Abraham. He considers Ylva highly likely because the sequence stands beside another name and is difficult to explain there as the ordinary noun “she-wolf.”

The interpretation is not conclusive. With no sentence around the two words, ylfa might instead be a grammatical form of the masculine name Ylve, making the phrase something like “Ylve's Abraham.” The inscription therefore supports probable medieval use of Ylva as a personal name, but it does not securely identify the bearer or justify calling that person the first Ylva.

From Old Byname to Modern First Name

Isof's concise name lexicon lists 1879 under “earliest attested.” Because the same entry identifies medieval Ingrid Ylva as a byname, the date is best read as the lexicon's first evidence for modern first-name use, not the earliest occurrence of the word or byname. Its underlying name dictionary was published in 2004, before Mårtensson's assessment of the Börstig inscription appeared.

The same Isof entry identifies 1950–1969 and the period from 2000 onward as Ylva's strongest phases of Swedish use. Sweden's *Nationalencyklopedin* independently describes it as a fashion name of the 1950s and 1960s. These patterns are better understood as modern revival and renewed use than as proof that the first name was passed down continuously from medieval Sweden.

Ylva also became established in Norway. Name scholar Gulbrand Alhaug describes it as a Swedish-derived feminine name in *Store norske leksikon* and reports that Norwegian use was strongest after 2015. In 2022, 2,164 women in Norway had Ylva as their only or first given name, and 121 girls received it that year, placing it among Norway's 50 most-used girls' names. Those figures describe 2022, not a permanent ranking.

In the Swedish name-day calendar, Ylva is observed on 11 April, the same day as Ulf. It is also 11 April in Norway; the Swedish-language Finnish calendar places Ylva on 13 September. A shared calendar date reflects modern name-day organization, not a genealogical connection between bearers of Ylva and Ulf.

Related Forms and Similar-Looking Names

  • Ulf is the related masculine Scandinavian name built on the word for “wolf.” It is related by language and meaning, not interchangeable with Ylva in records.
  • Ylfa is the Icelandic counterpart listed by *Behind the Name*. It is useful as a linguistic comparison, but a record written Ylfa should not automatically be changed to Ylva.
  • Alva is visually similar but has a different explanation. Isof's Alva entry derives Alva from Alf, Alvar, or names beginning with Alf-/Alv-. Alva is therefore not simply a spelling variant of Ylva.

Ylva is documented by the principal sources here as a byname and a feminine given name, not as a single hereditary surname with one origin. If it appears in a surname field, the record itself must establish whether it is genuinely a family name or a transposed given name. In every case, etymology explains the name's language history; it does not establish a family line.

References