Edith

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Girl · Old English

Edith

Say it: EE-dith

Try it with your surname

Meaning

From Old English Eadgyth, from ead 'wealth, prosperity' and guth 'battle'.

Certainscholars agree on this meaning.

One of the few Old English women's names to survive the Norman Conquest in steady use, then revived strongly in the Victorian era.

Its wave through time

Fading since the 1890s

In the United States

051018801900192019401960198020002020Peak 1884per 1,000 babies of that sex
  • 268,645 babies given this name since 1880
  • At its height in 1895, about 1 in 120 girls
  • 643 babies in 2020

Through the ages

  1. The Viking and Anglo-Saxon Age700 to 1100
  2. The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
  3. Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
  4. The Modern Age1880 to today

Used by

EnglishAnglo-SaxonAmerican

The family of the name

Other spellings: Edyth, Eadgyth, Ediva

LatinEditha
GermanEdith
FrenchÉdith
SwedishEdit

Famous bearers

  • Edith of Wessex, queen of Edward the Confessor
  • Edith (Matilda) of Scotland, queen of Henry I
  • Edith Wharton, American novelist

Names worth a look

Where this comes from

  • Anglo-Saxon charters, chronicles and church records
  • English poll taxes and lay subsidy rolls (13th and 14th centuries)
  • National census records of the 19th and 20th centuries
  • United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
  • United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source

Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.

Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.