A name, traced

Before 1904, “Wendy” was barely a name at all.

In Britain it appears as a surname from at least the 1600s, and once as a man's name: a Captain Wendy Oxford, named in the 1640s as a spy by the Leveller John Lilburne. As a girl's name, it did not really exist.

Then J. M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan (1904), and its novelisation Peter and Wendy (1911). He took the name from a child: Margaret Henley, daughter of his friend, the poet W. E. Henley. She called him “my friendy.” She could not yet say her Rs. It came out “my fwendy,” then “my fwendy-wendy.” Barrie kept the word and gave it to Wendy Darling.

Margaret died of meningitis before her sixth birthday. She never saw the play, never knew that a word she made by accident would be stitched onto a character, and then onto a century of girls. In Britain the name went from almost nothing to everywhere, peaking in the 1960s before fading again.

On paper it is a Welsh name. In practice it belongs to one story, and to one small girl who could not pronounce the letter R.

Sources: Wikipedia (Wendy; Margaret Henley); Interesting Literature, “The Curious Origins of the Girls' Name Wendy.”

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A name, traced: one page on one name, where it comes from and what it has carried. Send one: [email protected]. First look free.