Glenice
Feminine · “Clean or holy”
Glenice looks Welsh and largely is, though not in the way most people assume. It belongs to a wave of women's names that were made in Wales during a deliberate national revival — names built to look ancient, given to real children, and only a generation or two old when they began to feel like heirlooms.
How old is the name Glenice?
Glenice first appears in US birth records in 1907 — 118 years ago. The typical Glenice alive today was born around 1937, making them about 88 years old. About 400 people named Glenice are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Glenice most popular?
Glenice peaked in 1931, reaching #1336 nationally. See the whole 1931 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Glenys to Glenice
The story of Glenice
In the nineteenth century Wales set about rebuilding a literature it had nearly lost, and the eisteddfod — the competitive festival of poetry and music — was its engine. Part of what came out of that effort was a stock of Welsh-looking women's names with no medieval ancestors at all, coined by writers and given by parents who wanted the language visible on a birth certificate. That was not a neutral act. Victorian schooling in Wales was conducted in English, a government report had declared the Welsh language a hindrance, and children could be punished for speaking their own language in the schoolroom. Against that, naming a daughter something unmistakably Welsh was a small and entirely legible argument.
Meaningscholars disagree
Clean or holy, if the Welsh reading holds
The usual account traces it to the Welsh glân, meaning clean, pure or holy, which stands behind Glenys and its relatives. The ending is the difficulty: it matches the English -ice of Bernice and Clarice rather than anything Welsh, so the name looks like a Welsh word finished off in English. The alternative reading, that it was built on the Gaelic glen, is a separate word and a different language, and the resemblance is a coincidence.
How the name formed
- Glenys
- Glenice
Related forms: Glenys · Glenice
Pronouncing Glenice
GLEN-iss
Two syllables, stress at the front, with a soft s at the end. Not GLEN-ice; the final e is silent.
Nicknames for Glenice
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1907
- Most girls named
- 193130 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1336reached in 1931
- Change vs 1967
- +16.7%7 in 1968, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Glenice in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Glenys in Welsh — spelling variant
- Glenice in Welsh — same name
Glenices among us
people named Glenice are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Glenice sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It carries a real national identity, which very few names in American use can claim so plainly.
- The sounds are all ordinary English, so it is easy for people who have never met it.
- It is genuinely uncommon without being invented, which is a hard combination to find.
- Glenys, Glennis and Glenice all exist, and hers will be swapped for one of the others regularly.
- Americans will hear the men's name Glen at the front of it and may assume the rest is a suffix.
- The ending will be read as rhyming with ice by people seeing it for the first time.
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Glenice
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Glenices are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 400 people named Glenice are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Glenice in 2025?
- Glenice is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Glenice with classmates?
- Glenice will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More G names
The most-given names starting with G, all years combined.
Grace#38 · Gloria#654 · Gladys#3211 · Geraldine#2438 · Gail#8362 · Gertrude#6546 · Georgia#99 · Gina#2076
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Glenice? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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