Ingrid

Ingrid is Old Norse through and through, joining the fertility god Ing with frid, beautiful or beloved, to mean something like beloved of Ing. It carries the cool, birch-forest air of Scandinavia inside two unhurried syllables. Ingrid Bergman, gazing across a Casablanca tarmac, installed the name permanently in film history and earned it three Academy Awards in the process. In Sweden and Norway it has remained a steady traditional choice, neither faddish nor forgotten, and it has been creeping back into English-speaking nurseries in recent years. Ingrid reads poised and intelligent, a name that suggests someone who watches before she speaks.