Glynis
Feminine · “pure”
Glynis is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 2,014 girls against 10 boys since 1880.
The y in this spelling is the Welsh one and the e in the other is the English attempt at it. Welsh uses y where English would expect a different letter entirely, and a spelling that keeps it is closer to the language the name comes from — which makes this version, counterintuitively, the more authentic of the two.
How old is the name Glynis?
Glynis first appears in US birth records in 1939 — 86 years ago. The typical Glynis alive today was born around 1964, making them about 61 years old. About 1,800 people named Glynis are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Glynis most popular?
Glynis peaked in 1963, reaching #596 nationally. See the whole 1963 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From glân to Glynis
The story of Glynis
Welsh counts seven vowels and two of them look like consonants to an English reader. W and y are both full vowels in Welsh — which is why a word like cwm has one and why y turns up in the middle of names where English expects something else — and once that is known a great many apparently unpronounceable Welsh words become straightforward. It also explains why English respellings of Welsh names go wrong so consistently: they treat the y as a decoration or as a stand-in for an i, when in the original it is doing exactly the job an ordinary vowel letter does.
Meaning
pure, clean, holy
From a Welsh adjective still in ordinary use. The derivation is accepted by everyone who works on Welsh names, and the ending is a standard Welsh way of making a name from an adjective.
How the name formed
- glân
- Glynis
- Glenys
Related forms: Glynis
Pronouncing Glynis
GLIN-iss
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The y is a short i sound here, which is one of the two values Welsh gives the letter.
Nicknames for Glynis
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
- 1939
- Most girls named
- 1963278 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #596reached in 1963
- Change vs 2004
- 0.0%5 in 2008, from 5
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.
Glynis in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Glynis in Welsh — same name
Glyniss among us
people named Glynis 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
Glynis 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
- The spelling is closer to the Welsh original than the commoner English one.
- The meaning is simple and comes from a living language.
- The sound is easy for English speakers on the first attempt.
- Glenys and Glennis are both in use and the spelling gets queried.
- The spelling is recorded for a few boys, but nearly every child with it is a girl.
- It is closely tied to the mid-century decades of its American use.
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Glynis
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Glyniss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,800 people named Glynis are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Glynis in 2025?
- Glynis is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Glynis with classmates?
- Glynis 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 Glynis? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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