Olwen
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A female given name from Welsh from Welsh legend, specifically The Mabinogion.
"[…] her daughter, posthumous child of Gil, to my astonishment christened in St. Aidan's with the name Marion (given by her godmother, a broadcaster friend of Esme) and Olwen (given by me as godfather, who thought Nuala's granddaughter should have a good Celtic name to sustain her through life). To my surprise and pleasure, it was Olwen that Esme chose to use when speaking of, and to, the baby - though she showed an unhappy tendency to shorten it to Ollie, in spite of my protests that this brought to mind not a stately princess, but the fat man in the Laurel and Hardy comedy series."
Example
More examples"[…] her daughter, posthumous child of Gil, to my astonishment christened in St. Aidan's with the name Marion (given by her godmother, a broadcaster friend of Esme) and Olwen (given by me as godfather, who thought Nuala's granddaughter should have a good Celtic name to sustain her through life). To my surprise and pleasure, it was Olwen that Esme chose to use when speaking of, and to, the baby - though she showed an unhappy tendency to shorten it to Ollie, in spite of my protests that this brought to mind not a stately princess, but the fat man in the Laurel and Hardy comedy series."
Etymology
From Welsh Olwen.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.