Hedwig
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Germanic hād-/hadu- 'battle' + wīg 'fight'; later influenced by wīh 'holy'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/heːtvɪç/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hedwig is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 3.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 5.4K
- USUnited States1 in 300K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 159 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈26,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Germanic hād-/hadu- 'battle' + wīg 'fight'; later influenced by wīh 'holy'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hedwig counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #480 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 1 | Hedwig | 136 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 3,180 | 1 in 5.4K | 3K | Hedwig | 54 |
| US United States | — | 1,107 | 1 in 300K | 1.1K | Hedwig | 159 |
| AT Austria | #913 | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 96 | Hedwig | 56 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Hedwig | 49 |
| SE Sweden | — | 566 | 1 in 18K | 566 | Hedwig | 23 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: the de-leipzig-vornamen register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Hedwig is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Germanic hadu + wig, 'battle' + 'fight'; St Hedwig.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In German, a female given name from Proto-Germanic, borne by a 12th/13th century Silesian saint
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, zu germ. hadu ‚Kampf‘ + -wig ‚Kampf‘; belegt als Schreibvariante mit ch/g-Variation im Auslaut nach i (Hedwig/Herdwig/Herwig).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
In German, from hathu 'battle' + wīg 'fight'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Germanic: ‘battle strife’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Hedwig of Saxonyb. 922mother of Hugh Capet
- Hedwig of Silesiab. 1174DEDuchess of Silesia (1174–1243)
- Jadwiga I of Polandb. 1374HUnot in their usual nameQueen of Poland (1384–1399)
- Hedvig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorpb. 1636SEnot in their usual namequeen of Sweden (1636-1715)
- Marie of Prussiab. 1825DEnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Bavaria; youngest child of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Princess Marie Anna of Hesse-Homburg
- Hedwig Dohmb. 1831DEGerman feminist, writer, and opinion journalist (1831–1919)
- Hedy Lamarrb. 1914ATnot in their usual nameAustrian-American actress and co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping (1914-2000)
- Gerda Lernerb. 1920USnot in their usual nameAustrian-American women's history scholar (1920-2013)
- Marlene Schmidtb. 1937DEnot in their usual nameGerman actress
- Marie Christine, Princess Michael of Kentb. 1945ATnot in their usual namewife of Prince Michael of Kent
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 50 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 3K | #614 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 1.7K | #1,528 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #11,527 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 566 | #2,541 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 195 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2019 | 180 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2018 | 173 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2017 | 171 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 140 | #3,594 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 96 | #1,039 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 17 | #11,527 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 16 | #22,173 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Hedwig mean, and where does it come from?
- from Germanic hād-/hadu- 'battle' + wīg 'fight'; later influenced by wīh 'holy' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What are other forms of the name Hedwig?
- In the etymology graph, Jadwiga, Edwige and Jaga are forms of the same name in other languages; Hedy is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Hedwig a male or female name?
- Hedwig is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Hedwig have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Hedwig in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hedwig.
- How do you pronounce Hedwig?
- A machine transcription gives /heːtvɪç/ (IPA) for German.
- How common is the name Hedwig?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 3,180 people named Hedwig, about 1 in 5.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Hedwig compared with other names?
- In Germany, Hedwig is the 480th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hedwig?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hedwigThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Hedwig” — the 480th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.