Evelyn
An English name grown from the Norman Aveline, with a Hebrew root behind it that carries the old sense of "desired one". In Poland it stays rare, reaching only a handful of girls in recent years, so most people here have never met one.
Evelyn Pronunciation
What Evelyn means
Where Evelyn comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Evelyn came into English from the old Norman name Aveline, which speakers carried across generations and slowly reshaped. Behind Aveline sits a Hebrew root, and the meaning long attached to Evelyn is "desired one."
It began as a surname. Only later did families lift it back into use as a first name, and for much of that time it belonged to boys as readily as girls. The diarist John Evelyn, who kept a famous record of seventeenth-century London, wore it as a man's name, and the novelist Evelyn Waugh did the same well into the twentieth century.
The shift toward girls came gradually, and today Evelyn reads across the English-speaking world as a girl's name. A Polish teacher writing it into a class register would set it among the Emilias and Zuzannas, a borrowed form that still keeps its old sense of "desired one," drawn from Aveline.
How many people are named Evelyn
1 in 77205 women in Poland is named Evelyn. 294 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1763 among female names.
Evelyn's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been climbing since 2025.
Evelyn as a middle name
Evelyn is a first name for 294 women in Poland and a middle name for another 108, a 73/27 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 642nd, between Cornelia (108) and Leigh (108).
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#640 Adelina108
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#641 Cornelia108
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#642 Evelyn108
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#643 Leigh108
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#644 Bernadette107