How did Erling Haaland influence U.S. baby names in the early 2020s?

Soccer superstar Erling Haaland began his professional career in 2016, when he was just 15 years old.

In 2019, while playing for his home country of Norway at the FIFA U20 World Cup, he made headlines for scoring a record nine (!) goals in a single match.

In 2020, while playing on the German team Borussia Dortmund, he received the Golden Boy award as the best under-21 player in all of Europe.

In both 2023 and 2024, while playing on the English team Manchester City, he was the top goalscorer in the entire Premier League. (His 36 goals during the 2022-23 season is the league’s all-time record, in fact.)

We can see evidence of Haaland’s success in the U.S. baby name data. The name Haaland debuted in the data in 2021, and the name Erling reached its highest-ever usage (so far) last year:

	Boys named Erling	Boys named Haaland
2023	54	15
2022	23	7
2021	17	5*
2020	5	.
2019	.	.

(Those 2023 numbers might have been even higher if Haaland had made an appearance at the 2022 World Cup, for which Norway failed to qualify.)

Erling Haaland — despite being raised in Norway by Norwegian parents — was born in Leeds because his father, former professional footballer Alf-Inge Haaland, was playing for Leeds United at the time. During their athletic careers, both father and son chose to go by “Haaland,” an Anglicized form of the actual family surname, Håland.

The locative surname Håland can refer to any of a number of places in Norway called Håland. The place name derives from the Old Norse word Hávaland, which is made up of elements meaning “high” and “farm.”

The personal name Erling was used regularly in the U.S. during the early 20th century, thanks to families that had emigrated from Scandinavia. It means “descendant of [the] jarl.” (A jarl was a type of nobleman during the Viking Age.)

What are your thoughts on the names Erling and Haaland?

P.S. A previous recipient of the Golden Boy award was Kylian Mbappé.

Sources:

• Erling Haaland – Wikipedia
• “Erling Braut Haaland: Norway player scores nine goals in U20 World Cup win.” BBC 30 May 2019.
• Karlsen, Tor-Kristian. “Erling Haaland’s remarkable rise: How he became soccer’s most-wanted teenager.” ESPN 5 Mar. 2020.
• Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Erling – Nordic Names
• SSA

Image: Adapted from Erling Haaland 2023 by Jacek Stanislawek under CC BY-SA 4.0.