Aesir comes from Old Norse and names the principal tribe of gods in Norse mythology.
Aesir (Old Norse: Æsir) is not merely a name but the collective designation of the principal divine family in Norse mythology — the pantheon that includes Odin the Allfather, Thor the thunder god, Frigg, Tyr, Baldr, and the rest of the gods who dwell in Asgard. The word itself derives from Proto-Germanic roots, possibly connected to an ancient term for "god" or "divine being," related to Old English "ós" and the Gothic "ans." The Aesir stood in mythological tension with the Vanir, an older group of fertility and nature deities, and their eventual reconciliation through a ritual mingling of saliva — giving birth to the mead of poetry — is one of the stranger and more beautiful myths in the Norse corpus.
The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, the 13th-century Icelandic texts that preserved Norse mythology in writing, use Aesir throughout as both a collective noun and a marker of divine aristocracy. To be of the Aesir was to belong to the ruling class of the cosmos, the gods who managed war, wisdom, and the fates of humans. The Ragnarök prophecies predict that most of the Aesir will fall in the final battle against the forces of chaos — Odin devoured by Fenrir, Thor felled by the Midgard Serpent — but that some survivors will rebuild the world anew.
It is a mythology that takes death seriously and does not flinch from it. As a given name in the modern era, Aesir is extraordinarily rare, used almost exclusively by parents deeply committed to Norse heritage and mythology — found most in Scandinavia, Iceland, and communities within the broader Norse pagan revival (Ásatrú). It carries obvious weight: to give a child this name is to name them not after a single god but after the divine order itself. That ambition is either its greatest appeal or its obvious risk, depending on one's perspective on names that must be explained before they can be worn.