Wendel
Masculine · “a Wend”
Wendel has a shepherd behind it and a presidential campaign in front of it. The saint was a hermit in the Rhineland who is still the patron of shepherds and cattle in that country; the campaign was a businessman who took on a sitting president and lost, and whose first name was on every front page in the country for a year. American parents responded the way they always have.
How old is the name Wendel?
Wendel first appears in US birth records in 1911 — 114 years ago. The typical Wendel alive today was born around 1952, making them about 73 years old. About 1,200 people named Wendel are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Wendel most popular?
Wendel peaked in 1940, reaching #952 nationally. Today it ranks #12008, 11,056 places below that high. See the whole 1940 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Wendelin to Wendel
The story of Wendel
Wendelin was a hermit venerated in the Saarland, and the town of Sankt Wendel grew around his shrine; he is invoked for herds and herdsmen, which kept his name alive in rural Catholic Germany for a very long time. German families brought it to America, where it settled quietly. What made it briefly conspicuous was a presidential election in 1940: Wendell Willkie, a utilities lawyer who had never held office, won the Republican nomination and ran hard against a sitting president. Names attached to a campaign rise with it, and this one is legible in the record almost to the year.
Meaningscholars disagree
a Wend, a Slav
The usual derivation takes the name from Wend, the German word for the Slavic peoples living east of the Elbe — so it began as a description of where someone came from. Another reading connects it to a Germanic root meaning to wander, which would make it a name for a traveler. The two are not easy to separate, and both are offered seriously.
How the name formed
- Wendelin
- Wendel
- Wendell
Related forms: Wendelin · Vendel · Vendelín
Pronouncing Wendel
WEN-dul
Two syllables, stress on the first, the second reduced. German says the w as a v — VEN-de-lin for the fuller form — but the American name has been said with an English w for well over a century.
Nicknames for Wendel
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
- 1911
- Most boys named
- 195945 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #952reached in 1940
- Change vs 2023
- −28.6%5 in 2025, from 7
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.
Wendel in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Wendelin in German — same name
- Vendel in Hungarian — same name
- Vendelín in Czech — same name
Wendels among us
people named Wendel are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 341,615 born in 2025 was named Wendel
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Wendel
- #12008
- Wendel on the 2025 chart
- #856
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Wendel went to 5 boys in 2025, but Wendell is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 72, which makes it the 856th most-given boys’ name of the year — 11,152 places above the chart.
- Wendell67
- Wendel5
About 1 boy in 23,723 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 341,615 for Wendel itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Gerhardt test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Wendel's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Gerhardt climbed just as high around 1916, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Gerhardt's path sketches the road Wendel is walking now.
Wendel sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Wendel beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Wendel in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It has both a medieval saint and a twentieth-century American campaign behind it, which is an unusual pair.
- Del is available as a short form and belongs to a different decade than the full name.
- Six letters, two syllables, and nothing an English reader stumbles over.
- Wendell with two l's is the commoner American spelling and will be written instead.
- It sits very close to Wendy, which is a woman's name, and the confusion is common.
- It belongs firmly to an older American generation and carries that flavor.
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Wendel
Masculine · #12008 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Wendels are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Wendel are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Wendel?
- Wendel is one of 2 recorded spellings. Wendell is the more common one — 67 births in 2025 against 5 for Wendel.
- How popular is the name Wendel in 2025?
- Wendel ranks #12008 among US boy names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Wendel?
- About 1 in every 341,615 US boys born in 2025 was named Wendel — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Wendel with classmates?
- Wendel will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Wendel
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Garfield#12008 · Chas#12008 · Lew#12008 · Barney#12008 · Dewitt#12008 · Granville#12008 · Cicero#12008 · Willam#12008
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Wendel? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Wendel and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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