Swedish given names tend to go in and out of fashion. Usually a name will be unfashionable for about 80 years before coming back in fashion. Most names stay popular for about ten years, leading to the possibility of guessing a Swede's age-group by his or her name. Names that are consistently popular, regardless of fashion waves, exist but are few. Some such names are Anna and Erik.

As opposed to many Hindu, Persian and Spanish names the meaning of a Swedish name is rarely obvious. While many Persian names correspond directly to a noun, in Sweden people rarely know the exact meaning of the name they give their child and if they do it's been found out after investigation. Few names, such as Björn ("bear") and Liv ("life"), are nouns spelled the same way and with an actual modern meaning.

In general the names can be divided into four categories, based on their origin.

• The native Swedish names of Norse origin that are often the same in Danish, and Norwegian. A good example would be Ingrid, very common in Sweden and often perceived as a good, proper, Scandinavian name, examplified by Ingrid Bergman.
• Names incorporated in Sweden through Latin and Hebrew, due to the arrival of Christianity in the 11th century. While some Biblical names are completely obsolete or even found amusing others are extremely common and has proven lasting popularity.
• Foreign names come into Sweden through influence of other languages and cultures. There are most commonly of German, French or English origin and most of them have been around in Swedish mental database of names for centuries. An example is Oscar, which became popular with the birth of the Swedish crown-prince later to become Oskar I and still today is very common. Historically the royal family of Sweden were the main source in popularizing new names or re-instating old ones, and to some extent still are.
• The relatively new names due to immigration and cultural influence. Examples of these are Mohammad, popular amongst Swedens Muslim immigrants, Kevin, made popular in the early nineties by the Home Alone movie and Anita, an originally Spanish name very common amongst Swedish women born in the thirties and forties, for example Anita Ekberg.

Certain names may be both pronounceable and recognizeable to Swedes but will simply not be functional. While names like Cordelia, Flavio, Griselda and Hector are common and highly functional in many other countries, they appear ridiculous in Swedish context and would quite possibly be used in fiction to attain comical effect.

This list includes all names that occurred at least 30 000 times as first or middle names among the Swedish citizens alive in 1973, 1995 or/and 2008. Names in bold occurred at least 100 000 times. The decade tells when the name was most common. The "1890s" group includes some persons born in 1865-1889.

• Sture Allén, Staffan Wahlin, Förnamnsboken, Almqvist&Wiksell 1979, →ISBN
• Sture Allén, Staffan Wåhlin, Förnamnsboken, Norstedts 1995, →ISBN
• Statistics Sweden Date of last access October 8, 2009

The origin of this list is not known. It may include errors and non-Swedish names.

In Sweden (or Scandinavia in general) a typical Germanic hypocoristic pet form forming is to trunk the whole name, doubling (germinating) the end consonant, and put an E at the end. Kalle and Olle are such examples.

• Svenska förnamn, by Roland Otterbjörk, Esselte Studium, 2nd edition, Stockholm, 1975
• Förnamn i Sverige, by Eva Brylla (Svenska språknämnden, 88), Liber AB, 1st edition, Malmö, 2004
• Våra namn, by Ivar Wallensteen and Gunnar Brusewitz, Ica bokförlag (Forma Publishing Group AB), 4th edition, Falun, 2008
• Nordic Names
• Frequency search of given names in Sweden - includes names of linguistic minorities