Wendy
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Modern English name, likely created from ‘Gwendolen’ or as a literary coinage
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wendy is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 72nd most common given name.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 311(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 570
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 596
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Wendy itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #377 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 584 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 311 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,700,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
El Salvador, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Wendi in SV El Salvador.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Modern English name, likely created from ‘Gwendolen’ or as a literary coinage.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wendy 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈1,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 825 | — | Wendy | 89 |
| US United States | #170 | 257,751 | 1 in 1.3K | 257K | Wendy | 584 |
| GB United Kingdom | #111 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 619 | 49 | Wendy | 328 |
| CA Canada | #112 | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 726 | 1 | Wendy | 309 |
| AU Australia | #101 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 570 | 94 | Wendy | 274 |
| SV El Salvador | #783 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 311 | — | Wendi | 16 |
| NZ New Zealand | #88 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 596 | 10 | Wendy | 146 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 8,041 | 1 in 634 | 8K | — | 6 |
| NL Netherlands | #72 | 215as Wendie | 1 in 80K | 20K | Wendy | 163 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Wendy 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 English, English; name attributed to J. M. Barrie in the early 1900s for Peter Pan.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In French, Issu de la littérature anglo-saxonne; popularisé par Peter Pan de James Barrie.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Anglais, nom litteraire popularise au XIXe siecle; origine incertaine.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Amichevole
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
Amiga
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Wendy Hillerb. 1912GBEnglish film and stage actress (1912-2003)
- Wendy Barrieb. 1912GBBritish actress
- Wendy Carlosb. 1939USAmerican composer and electronic musician (born 1939)
- Wendy Shermanb. 1949USDeputy Unites States Secretary of State from 2021 to 2023
- Wendie Malickb. 1950USnot in their usual nameAmerican film, television and voice actress
- Wendy Phillipsb. 1952USAmerican actress
- Wendy Brownb. 1955USAmerican political theorist
- Wendy Crewsonb. 1956CACanadian actress
- Wendy B. Lawrenceb. 1959USUS astronaut and Navy Captain
- Wendy Makkenab. 1963USactress
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 99 sources across 59 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 257K | #208 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 20K | #176 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 8K | #82 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 613 | #208 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 165 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 1978 | 94 | #86 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1980 | 48 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 18 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1998 | 10 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,418 |
Reference works 4
- 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 Wendy mean, and where does it come from?
- Modern English name, likely created from ‘Gwendolen’ or as a literary coinage. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- In which country does Wendy have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.7 million people named Wendy in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wendy.
- What are other forms of the name Wendy?
- In the etymology graph, Wendi, Wenda and Gwendolen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Wendy a male or female name?
- Wendy 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.
- How common is the name Wendy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 257,751 people named Wendy in 2020, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Wendy compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Wendy is the 72nd most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wendy?
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/wendyThe 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, “Wendy” — the 72nd most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.