Before it was known as a given name, Wendy was used as a nickname for Gwendolin or Winniefred, for example. It has its origins in the Welsh word ‘gwen’ for ‘white’ or ‘blessed’.
Wendy is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Wendy 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 girls names, Wendy ranks 878. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Wendy. In the entire USA, approximately 258,232 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Wendy. That is 0.08 % of all living Americans.
Before it was known as a given name, Wendy was used as a nickname for Gwendolin or Winniefred, for example. It has its origins in the Welsh word ‘gwen’ for ‘white’ or ‘blessed’.
Wendy became common as a first name... after the release of the play 'Peter Pan' by J. M. Barrie in 1904. One of its protagonists is called Wendy Darling.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Wendy reached its highest rank ever in the year 1970 at #28. In other words: 11,141 newborn girls were named Wendy that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Wendy is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Wendy will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Wendy was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Wendy ranked 1,133 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 192 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Wendy will remain a universally popular name.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Wendy. Because: There are women and girls named Wendy in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Wendy is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Utah, where Wendy ranks on place 61. The greatest chance of meeting Wendy, however, is in Hawaii, where one in 298 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 597 women and girls and in Oklahoma, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 1,389 women and girls for their name before you once get Wendy as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The W is really rare as a first letter for girls' names: only 0.8% of all common girls' names in the US begin with a W. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With five letters, the name Wendy 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 if 0.8% of all girls' names start with a W, all other letters occur on average five times as often as the W. Nevertheless, individual girls' names with W are quite popular, the most common currently being Wanda.
If your name is Wendy 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 Wendy, you can simply say:
Windmill
Elephant
Nut
Dinosaur
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Wendy
Wendy
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
E
N
D
Y
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.
W
E
N
D
Y
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. Wendy sounds like this:
