Meaning and history
Possibly meaning “white ring,” from Welsh gwen meaning “white, blessed” and dolen meaning “ring, loop,” Gwendolen appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century chronicles in the Latin form Guendoloena as the name of an ancient queen of the Britons who defeats her ex-husband in battle, and Geoffrey later used it in Vita Merlini for the wife of the prophet Merlin. Another theory says the name arose from Geoffrey’s misreading of the masculine name Guendoleu. It was not regularly used as a personal name until the 19th century and was chosen by George Eliot for a character in Daniel Deronda (1876).
20062006: no US SSA record for this spelling
2007: 5 births, rank #17,636
2008: 8 births, rank #12,579
2009: 6 births, rank #15,242
2010: 7 births, rank #13,448
20112011: 7 births, rank #13,347
2012: 9 births, rank #11,257
2013: 16 births, rank #7,372
2014: 22 births, rank #5,797
2015: 27 births, rank #4,981
20162016: 27 births, rank #4,990
2017: 15 births, rank #7,442
2018: 13 births, rank #8,146
2019: 14 births, rank #7,716
2020: 18 births, rank #6,325
20212021: 10 births, rank #9,562
2022: 11 births, rank #9,056
2023: 17 births, rank #6,680
2024: 13 births, rank #7,967
20252025: 11 births, rank #8,860
In 2025, 11 babies were recorded with the name Gwendolen, ranking #8,860 among girls.