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Girls' name · 124,664 recorded births

Gwendolyn

#360 in the US in 2025

Where Gwendolyn stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#360girls’ names · US 2025

Gwendolyn was the 360th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 848 births.

peak 1953 · 3,519188019532025

Its moment was 1953, when 3,519 babies were given it. In 4 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#360US rank, 2025 (girls)
848US births in 2025
#112its best US rank, in 1951
1953peak year — 3,519 births
124,385US births since 1880
127NZ births since 1907
152E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Gwendolyn's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Gwendolyn was under the floor in 4 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Gwendolyn in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.094187
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Gwendolyn in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Gwendolyn in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Gwendolyn has been registered 127 times since 1907, peaking in 1920 with 16 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.070140
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Gwendolyn in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Gwendolyn in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Gwendolyn was registered 152 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2024 with 33 births. It ranked #1,362 for girls in 2025 on 23 births. Across those years it has been rising.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.06.413
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Gwendolyn in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#8365
1890#82511
1900#56737
1910#311151
1920#236758
1930#199959
1940#1691,222
1950#1133,039
1960#1632,546
1970#2531,220
1980#441486
1990#679314
2000#731317
2010#561518
2020#378820

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Gwendolyn most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
Texas8,559
California6,810
New York6,664
Illinois6,468
Georgia6,281
North Carolina6,054
Pennsylvania5,614
Louisiana5,500
Florida5,458
Alabama5,173

Questions about Gwendolyn

How popular is the name Gwendolyn?

Gwendolyn ranked #360 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 848 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Gwendolyn most popular?

Gwendolyn peaked in 1953, when 3,519 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Gwendolyn rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Gwendolyn has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1953, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.