Wendy

Wendy Darling drawn by Oliver Herford in The Peter Pan Alphabet
Pronunciation	(/ˈwɛndi/)
Gender	Female
Language(s)	English
Meaning	White, holy
Alternative spelling	Wendi
Related names	Gwendolyn, Gwen

Wendy is a given name generally given to females in English-speaking countries.

The name is found in United States records from the 19th century; the name Wendy appeared over twenty times in the U.S. Census of 1880. In Britain, Wendy appeared as a name for both females and males in the 1881 census of England, and was occasionally used as a diminutive for the Welsh Gwendolyn. It was also used as a surname in Britain from at least the 17th century. However, its existence in Britain as a girl's name is purely based on the character Wendy Darling from the 1904 play Peter Pan and its 1911 novelization Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie; reaching its peak in the 1960s but has since rapidly declined. The name was inspired by young Margaret Henley, daughter of Barrie's poet friend W. E. Henley. With the common childhood difficulty pronouncing Rs, Margaret reportedly used to call him "my fwiendy-wendy".

The name Wendy is sometimes considered a variation of the (originally Polish) name Wanda.

The name Wendy in Dutch is either of Anglo-Saxon origin or an abbreviation of names such as Wendela (an old-fashioned name which probably means related to the Vandals).

Chinese women with the same or similar-sounding characters as their given names often anglicise their names as Wendi or Wendy (e.g. Wendi Deng, Wendy Kweh).