Ingeborg
Fewer than 140 women in Poland carry it, and no girl has been given it this century. Germanic at root, built from the god-name Ing and a word for protection or fortress.
Ingeborg Pronunciation
Ingeborg is pronounced een-GE-bork (/inˈgɛbɔrk/).
What Ingeborg means
Where Ingeborg comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Ingeborg is old. It comes from the Old Norse Ingibjǫrg, which binds the god Ing, also called Yngvi-Freyr, to the word borg, meaning fortress or protection. Read plainly, the name means Ing's stronghold. Scandinavian by birth, it settled into German use as well, and both traditions kept the spelling close to the source.
The oldest famous bearer had a hard life. Ingeborg of Denmark married Philip II of France in 1193. The king rejected her the morning after the wedding and tried for years to be rid of her. She held her claim as queen for two decades until Rome forced Philip to restore her. The name outlasted the insult.
Later the sense loosened. Where Ing was once a specific god, the meaning drifted toward protection by God in a broader Christian reading, which is how Polish records often gloss it. Ingeborg Bachmann, the Austrian poet born in 1926, carried it into modern letters. The fortress in borg is still there, under the newer meaning.
How many people are named Ingeborg
1 in 162186 women in Poland is named Ingeborg. 139 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2785 among female names.
Ingeborg as a middle name
Ingeborg is a first name for 139 women in Poland and a middle name for another 46, a 75/25 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1016th, between Hee (46) and Malika (46).
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#1014 Elektra46
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#1015 Hee46
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#1016 Ingeborg46
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#1017 Malika46
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#1018 Micaela46