Gwyn
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval Welsh nickname for someone with fair hair or pale skin, from Welsh gwyn ‘light, fair’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɡwɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gwyn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 148K(measured from records)
- ISIceland1 in 351K
- GYGuyana1 in 375K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 56 (measured from records)
- 1 in 148K (inferred from the name graph)
2,253 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval Welsh nickname for someone with fair hair or pale skin, from Welsh gwyn ‘light, fair’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gwyn 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,253 | 1 in 148K | 2.3K | Gwyn | 56 |
| NL Netherlands | 41 | 1 in 421K | 26 | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | 16 | 1 in 638K | 16 | — | 1 |
| PH Philippines | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 71M | — | Gwyn | 18 |
| GY Guyana | 2 | 1 in 375K | 2 | — | — |
| IS Iceland | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
2,253 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Gwyn 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 Welsh, From Welsh gwyn ‘white/fair’; earliest cited c.1553–7 in “John Wynl David ap Hugh Gwynne”.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In Welsh, From Welsh gwyn ‘white; blessed’; earliest citation 1304: De ririt ap Wyn.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
noticeably pale complexion, from W gwyn light, white, fair. This was also used as a personal name in the Middle Ages, and some early examples may reflect this. Patrs.: Eng.: Guys, Guyson. Vars.: Gwynn(e), Gwinn; Quinn; Winn. Dims.: Bret.: (Le) Guen(n)ec. Guyardeau see Wyatt Gwyneth see Gwinnett
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Welsh: originally a byname from Welsh GYPSY gwyn ‘white’, ‘fair’, ‘blessed’, ‘holy’. See also Wyn.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
1676, Quene Morris (= ? Gwen), and v. under Gwyllt examples of it being spelt as 'Quilt'.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
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)
- John Gwyn Jeffreysb. 1809GBWelsh conchologist and malacologist (1809–1885)
- Gwyn Jonesb. 1907GBBritish writer (1907–1999)
- Gwyn Jonesb. 1917GBWelsh physicist (1917–2006)
- Gwyn Martinb. 1921GBWelsh photographer
- Gwyn A. Williamsb. 1925GBWelsh historian (1925–1995)
- David G. Wattsb. 1932GBnot in their usual nameDesigner of Board games
- Gwyn Thomasb. 1936GBWelsh poet (1936–2016)
- Gwyn Prosserb. 1943GBBritish politician (born 1943)
- Gwyn Jenkinsb. 1965GBRoyal Marines officer and First Sea Lord of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy
- Daniel Evansb. 1973GBnot in their usual nameWelsh actor
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 28 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.3K | #13,278 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.2K | #12,851 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.2K | #13,367 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- Is Gwyn a male or female name?
- Gwyn 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 do you pronounce Gwyn?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡwɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Gwyn mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval Welsh nickname for someone with fair hair or pale skin, from Welsh gwyn ‘light, fair’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Gwyn?
- In the etymology graph, Fion, Fionn and Finnian are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Gwyn have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.3 thousand people named Gwyn, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gwyn.
- Where is Gwyn most common?
- Gwyn is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 148 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Gwyn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,253 people named Gwyn in 2020, about 1 in 148 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gwyn?
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/gwynThe 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, “Gwyn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.