The name Edwin means ‘rich friend’. It comes from the Old English words ‘ead’ for ‘rich, blessed’ and ‘ƿine’ for ‘friend’.
Edwin is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Edwin isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Edwin ranks 312. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 6 were named Edwin. In the entire USA, approximately 231,388 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Edwin. That is 0.07 % of all living Americans.
The name Edwin means ‘rich friend’. It comes from the Old English words ‘ead’ for ‘rich, blessed’ and ‘ƿine’ for ‘friend’.
Edwin is a very old... name, and has been in use since at least the 6th century.
Edwin is the epitome of perseverance. Every year since first names have been registered in the U.S., parents have come up with the idea of naming their son Edwin. This means that several boys named Edwin have witnessed significant events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Edwin has reached its best rank of #51 multiple times, most recently in 1922. The name has also been in the top 100 for many years. This makes Edwin one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Edwin was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Edwin will be Edwin. Like every other year, there have been newborns named Edwin in 2022 – in fact 914 to be precise, confirming Edwin as is still a very popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #346 among all boys‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 2021, when only 913 baby boys were named Edwin.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Edwin. Because: There are men and boys named Edwin in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, just 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Edwin is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular male first names, for example in New York, where Edwin ranks on position 80. The greatest chance of meeting Edwin, however, is in Hawaii, where one in 340 boys and men bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 722 men and boys and in Alaska, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 2,489 men and boys for their name before you once get Edwin as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter E is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 3.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Edwin is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that with 3.8%, E as the first letter in boys' names is almost as common as all 26 letters on average - and of all the boys' names that start with an E, Edward is the most common.
If your name is Edwin and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Edwin, you can simply say:
Elephant
Dinosaur
Windmill
Igloo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Edwin
Edwin
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
D
W
I
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
E
D
W
I
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Edwin sounds like this:
