Entry № 8697 · Celtic origin

Rhonwen Rhonwen — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ RHON-wen /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Celtic
Meaning
"White spear (Welsh Vortigern's wife + Geoffrey of Monmouth)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Medieval (Welsh)

A name that means "white spear (welsh vortigern's wife + geoffrey of monmouth)".

Rhonwen is from the Welsh Rhonwen — rhon (spear) + gwen (white, fair, blessed). Rhonwen (anglicized as Rowena) is the Saxon princess in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. CE). Central to the Arthurian historical-mythological cycle. Subject of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819) where Lady Rowena is the Saxon noble heroine. Welsh + Anglo-Saxon feminine name.

White spear (Welsh).

The name in its native script.

Rhonwen
Transliteration
Rhonwen
Pronunciation
/ ˈroʊn.wɛn /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Rhonwen stands.

Rhonwen does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Rhonwens before her.

Real people

In fiction
Rhonwen / Rowena
Geoffrey of Monmouth + Scott's Ivanhoe.
c. 1136

Names connected to Rhonwen.

The number behind Rhonwen.

7

The Seeker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Rhonwen reduce to 7, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.