Gwen
The girl's name Gwen has been in the national records since 1890, with 32,911 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 725th. About 24,000 Gwens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 60.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gwen boys named Gwen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 32,911
- Estimated living today
- 24,000
- Median age today
- 60
- Peak year
- 1959
- Best rank
- 295th
- Rank in 2025
- 725th
- First recorded
- 1890
- Girls / boys
- 32,617 / 294
How old the living Gwens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 32,911 babies given the name since 1890, about 24,000 are alive — 74 in every hundred. Roughly 5,300 of them are children and 9,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1965 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
A female given name from Welsh, shortened from Gwendolen or Guinevere.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gwens
- Gwen Stefani (born 1969)American singer
- Gwen John (1876–1939)Welsh painter
- Gwen Torrence (born 1965)American sprinter
- Gwen Verdon (1925–2000)American dancer and actress
- Gwen Jorgensen (born 1986)American triathlete
- Gwen Ifill (1955–2016)American journalist, television newscaster and author
- Gwen Moore (born 1951)American politician
- Gwen Lee (1904–1961)actress, model
People named Gwen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gwen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gwen is most concentrated in Utah (4.2×), Idaho (3.2×), Hawaii (2.6×), Minnesota (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1959
The most popular girls’ names the year Gwen peaked:
Gwen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Gwen | 1,170 | 553rd |
| France boys | Gwen | 530 | 1,227th |
| France girls | Gwen | 435 | 1,080th |
| Ireland girls | Gwen | 258 | 271st |
| Scotland girls | Gwen | 212 | 192nd |
| Belgium girls | Gwen | 208 | 233rd |
| Switzerland girls | Gwen | 133 | 474th |
| Belgium boys | Gwen | 5 | 1,016th |
| Poland girls | Gwen | 2 birth registrations | 734th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Gwen: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Gwen | 116 | 0.009% | 345th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Gwen | 12 | 0.003% | 670th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Gwen | 5 | 0.008% | 122nd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Gwen is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 35 of them.
Gwen: rank by region
In 2011, Gwen was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Gwen | 746 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Gwen among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Gwen | 2,139 | 2,418 |
| the Netherlands boys | Gwen | 50 | 81 |
| Finland girls | Gwen | 11 | 16 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Gwen against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.