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Girl · Welsh or Old English (disputed)
Rowena
Say it: roh-EE-nuh
Meaning
Origin uncertain; the name of Hengist's daughter in Geoffrey of Monmouth, possibly Welsh or Old English.
Uncertainseveral explanations, none settled.
Put into use by Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819).
Its wave through time
Fading since the 1890s
In the United States
- 10,336 babies given this name since 1880
- At its height in 1893, about 1 in 5,200 girls
- 50 babies in 2020
Through the ages
Used by
Famous bearers
- Rowena, heroine of Scott's Ivanhoe
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Well-known works of literature
- National census records of the 19th and 20th centuries
- 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.