Selwyn
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from medieval personal names Seluein/Selewyne, ultimately from Latin Silvanus or Old English Selewine ('hall-friend')
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sɛɫwɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Selwyn is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- ZASouth Africa
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from medieval personal names Seluein/Selewyne, ultimately from Latin Silvanus or Old English Selewine ('hall-friend').
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Selwyn, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Selwyn is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, (L Silvanus, a deriv. of silva wood; cf. Silva), bestowed in honour of various minor early Christian saints. 2. from a
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A surname transferred from the given name.
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)
- Selwyn Imageb. 1849GBEnglish poet and artist (1849-1930)
- Selwyn Edgeb. 1868AUBritish businessman and racing driver (1868-1940)
- Selwyn Walford Youngb. 1899Belizean musician
- Selwyn Jepsonb. 1899GBBritish writer (1899–1989)
- Selwyn Lloydb. 1904GBpolitician (1904-1978)
- Selwyn Raabb. 1934USAmerican journalist, author, and investigative reporter (1934–2025)
- Selwyn Maisterb. 1946NZfield hockey player and chemist
- Selwyn Koleb. 1973SBSolomon Island athlete (* 1973)
- Selwyn Wardb. 1977USAmerican actor
- Selwyn Birchwoodb. 1985USAmerican guitarist and singer
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 41 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 703 | #8,715 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 404 | #48,963 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 395 | #52,482 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 353 | #61,433 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 10 | #120,154 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 3 | #68,120 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #391,544 |
| VU Vanuatu | Vanuatu Electoral Office — 2020 General Election consolidated candidate list | 2020 | 1 | #4 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Selwyn mean, and where does it come from?
- from medieval personal names Seluein/Selewyne, ultimately from Latin Silvanus or Old English Selewine ('hall-friend'). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Selwyn?
- A machine transcription gives /sɛɫwɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Selwyn a male or female name?
- Selwyn is a male 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 Selwyn have the most bearers?
- Selwyn is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Selwyn?
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/selwynThe 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, “Selwyn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.