Olwen
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Welsh: from 61 ‘footprint’, ‘track’ + (g)wen ‘white’, ‘fair’, ‘blessed’, ‘holy’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Olwen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 150K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 665K
- DKDenmark1 in 2M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 8 (measured from records)
- 1 in 150K (inferred from the name graph)
167 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Welsh: from 61 ‘footprint’, ‘track’ + (g)wen ‘white’, ‘fair’, ‘blessed’, ‘holy’. A character of this name in Welsh legend had the magical property of causing flowers to spring up behind her wherever she went.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Olwen 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 | 167 | 1 in 2M | 154 | — | 2 |
| NL Netherlands | 26 | 1 in 665K | 26 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 5 | 1 in 150K | 5 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 5 | 1 in 2M | 5 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 3 | 1 in 2M | 3 | — | — |
167 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; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Olwen is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A female given name from Welsh from Welsh legend, specifically The Mabinogion.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Omf'alia
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Welsh; composed of the elements ôl footprint, track + (g)iven white, fair, blessed, holy. A character of this name in Welsh legend had the magical property of causing flowers to spring up behind her wherever she went.
as a word
In Welsh, a female given name from Welsh legend, specifically The Mabinogion.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Olwen Elizabeth Lloyd Georgeb. 1892GB(1892-1990)
- Olwen Broganb. 1900GBBritish archaeologist of ancient Roman Libya
- Olwen Brookesb. 1901GBEnglish actress
- Petula Clarkb. 1932GBnot in their usual nameBritish singer and actress
- Olwen Wymarkb. 1932USAmerican playwright (1932–2013)
- Olwen Huftonb. 1938GBBritish academic, educator and writer
- Olwen Fouéréb. 1954IEIrish actor and writer
- Olwen Mayb. 1963actress
- Olwen Kellyb. 1987IEIrish model and actress
- Olwen WilliamsGBWelsh clinician in sexual health
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 18 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 154 | #42,763 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 26 | #12,582 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 15 | #22,970 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13 | #42,763 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1917 | 12 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5 | #46,782 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 5 | #589 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2018 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1916 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1913 | 5 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #17,456 |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
- What does the name Olwen mean, and where does it come from?
- Welsh: from 61 ‘footprint’, ‘track’ + (g)wen ‘white’, ‘fair’, ‘blessed’, ‘holy’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Olwen a male or female name?
- Olwen 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.
- What are other forms of the name Olwen?
- In the etymology graph, Olwyn is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Olwen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 167 people named Olwen, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Olwen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Olwen is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 150 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Olwen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 167 people named Olwen in 2020, about 1 in 2.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Olwen?
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/olwenThe 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, “Olwen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.