Arvid

Arvid is Old Norse through and through, built from orn, eagle, and vidr, tree or wood, for a meaning usually translated as eagle in the tree or eagle of the forest. You can almost see the bird on its high branch. The name has long been a Scandinavian classic, worn by medieval priests, nineteenth-century composers, and twenty-first-century Norwegian schoolchildren. Recently it has climbed sharply in Sweden and Norway, reaching the top twenty in some years. Two clean syllables, a soft central v. Arvid reads outdoorsy and thoughtful, a hiker's name with a poet's inner life, utterly at home in a forest or a library.