Wendell
Wendell is a boy's name that peaked in 1940, when it was the 114th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,145th. About 28,000 Wendells are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Wendell boys named Wendell
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 54,330
- Estimated living today
- 28,000
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1940
- Best rank
- 114th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,145th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 567 / 53,763
How old the living Wendells are
born that year still alive today
Of the 54,330 babies given the name since 1880, about 28,000 are alive — 52 in every hundred. Roughly 1,400 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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
Origin Germanic languages
Short form of compound names beginning with the tribal name Wendel-, "a Wend".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Wendells
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)American poet and physician
- Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904–1971)American biochemist and virologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935)American jurist (1841–1935); US Supreme Court justice from 1902 to 1932
- Wendell Willkie (1892–1944)American lawyer and corporate executive
- Wendell Nascimento Borges (born 1993)Brazilian footballer
- Wendell Pierce (born 1963)American actor and businessman
- Wendell Berry (born 1934)American writer
- Wendell Phillips (1811–1884)American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer
People named Wendell with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Wendell is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Wendell is most concentrated in Vermont (4.0×), Hawaii (3.5×), Kentucky (3.2×), Maine (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1940
The most popular boys’ names the year Wendell peaked:
Wendell elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Wendell | 20 | 6,370th |
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.
Related names
Wendell 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.