This county, established February 17, 1881, had been thought by R. I. Holcombe and others to be named, like Kittson County three years before, in honor of Norman W. Kittson, who accomplished much for the extension of commerce and immigration to the Red River valley. The actual choice of this name, however, as better known by residents of the county and by surviving members of the convention held at Ada for securing its establishment by the state legislature, was for commemoration of the great number of Norwegian (Norseman or Norman) immigrants who had settled there. Norse delegates were a majority in the convention, and the name was selected on account of patriotic love and memories of their former homes across the sea. Similarly a township organized in March 1874, in Yellow Medicine County, had been named Norman; and another township there in the same year received the name Normania. "In Norway a native is referred to as a Norsk or Norman."

By the federal census of 1910, in a total population of 13,446 in Norman County, 2,957 were born in Norway, and both parents of 4,651 others among those born in America were Norwegian. No other county of Minnesota had so large a proportion of Norwegian people in that year.