Thorbjørn Jagland was born on 5 November 1950 as Thorbjørn Johansen in Drammen and is the son of a welder, Helge Th. Jagland, and a cook, Ingrid Bjerknes. Regarding the political activity of the father: He [... had additional duties as] a steward, and Thorbjørn Jagland has said that [... when] the postal service had letters [... or envelopes without a complete address], the mailman delivered [... many of] the letters to Jagland's home, "since that was were everything happened". Jagland graduated from secondary school in 1969. Along with his twin brother Helge, Thorbjørn Jagland briefly studied economics at the University of Oslo, but was at the same time involved in politics and did not finish his studies. Jagland and his parents changed their surname from Johansen, a common surname with working class connotations, to Jagland in 1957; the Jagland name was one of the proposed "new family names" which imitated traditional farm names in the book "2000 nye slektsnavn" ("2,000 new family names") by Astrid Moss; the book aimed to help members of the working class with common surnames to find more unique names.