Wenche
given name · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wenche is a given name, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country, where it is the 76th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from OE wencel ‘child’; first attested Godwin Wenche 1204 Cur (D).
- NONorway1 in 425◐
- SESweden1 in 22K
- DKDenmark1 in 49K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈13K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 91 ●
- 1 in 425 ◐
across 6 countries
recorded for this name
7.6K records
Official registry-verified
Norway
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Wen-Che in TW Taiwan, CN China and Венке in RU Russia, UA Ukraine.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
from OE wencel ‘child’; first attested Godwin Wenche 1204 Cur (D)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | #76 | 12,869△ | 5.8K rec. | 1 in 425 | 43K | Wenche | 91 |
| US United States | — | 966 | 985 rec. | — | — | Wenche | 60 |
| SE Sweden | — | 463 | 305 rec. | 1 in 22K | 463 | Wenche | 24 |
| DK Denmark | — | 120△ | 31 rec. | 1 in 49K | 120 | Wenche | 33 |
| DE Germany | — | 100 | 92 rec. | — | — | Wenche | 33 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 92 | 63 rec. | — | — | Wenche | 16 |
| ES Spain | — | 81 | 14 rec. | — | 22 | Wenche | 8 |
| TW Taiwan | — | 72 | 38 rec. | — | — | Wen-Che | 13 |
| AU Australia | — | 65 | 57 rec. | — | — | Wenche | 21 |
| GH Ghana | — | 59 | 56 rec. | — | — | Wenche | 8 |
| PH Philippines | — | 46 | 27 rec. | — | — | Wenche | 3 |
| RU Russia | — | 46 | 29 rec. | — | — | Венке | 22 |
Roughly 13K people in Norway bear this name (about 1 in 425). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Norwegian Bokmål43K77%
- Norwegian7.2K13%
- English1.2K2%
- Danish6271%
- Spanish2491%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norwegian Bokmål | 42,898 | 77% |
| Norwegian | 7,216 | 13% |
| English | 1,192 | 2% |
| Danish | 627 | 1% |
| Spanish | 249 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1945 | 336 |
| 1946 | 372 |
| 1947 | 382 |
| 1948 | 401 |
| 1949 | 382 |
| 1950 | 392 |
| 1951 | 401 |
| 1952 | 490 |
| 1953 | 498 |
| 1954 | 497 |
| 1955 | 534 |
| 1956 | 562 |
| 1957 | 538 |
| 1958 | 496 |
| 1959 | 473 |
| 1960 | 420 |
| 1961 | 385 |
| 1962 | 405 |
| 1963 | 380 |
| 1964 | 508 |
| 1965 | 490 |
| 1966 | 491 |
| 1967 | 427 |
| 1968 | 390 |
| 1969 | 344 |
| 1970 | 297 |
| 1971 | 323 |
| 1972 | 264 |
| 1973 | 215 |
| 1974 | 155 |
| 1975 | 175 |
| 1976 | 143 |
| 1977 | 120 |
| 1978 | 110 |
| 1979 | 93 |
| 1980 | 86 |
| 1981 | 60 |
| 1982 | 57 |
| 1983 | 60 |
| 1984 | 57 |
| 1985 | 44 |
| 1986 | 33 |
| 1987 | 28 |
| 1988 | 31 |
| 1989 | 24 |
| 1990 | 19 |
| 1991 | 19 |
| 1992 | 12 |
| 1993 | 4 |
| 1994 | 9 |
| 1995 | 14 |
| 1996 | 5 |
| 1997 | 7 |
| 1999 | 4 |
| 2000 | 7 |
| 2003 | 5 |
| 2007 | 4 |
| 2008 | 4 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 58 years between 1945–2008. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Wenche Fossb. 1917NONorwegian diva, actress, singer, recording artist (1917–2011)
- Wenche Selmerb. 1920NONorwegian architect
- Wenche Lowzowb. 1926NONorwegian teacher and politician (1926–2016)
- Wenche Barth Eideb. 1935NONutritional physiologist
- Wenche Frogn Sellægb. 1937NONorwegian politician
- Wencke Myhreb. 1947NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian singer and entertainer
- Wenche Steenb. 1951NONorwegian actor, model and contributing editor
- Wenche Andersenb. 1954NONorwegian television chef
- Wenche Olsenb. 1965NONorwegian politician
- Wenche Stensvoldb. 1975NONorwegian bicycle racer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 18 sources across 11 countries.
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 197 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Wenche?
- We estimate roughly 13 thousand people bear Wenche (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
- In which country does Wenche have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 13 thousand people bear Wenche in Norway, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled wenche.
- Where is Wenche most common?
- Wenche is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 425 people carrying it.
- How common is Wenche compared with other names?
- In Norway, Wenche is the 76th most common given name of 38,312 given names recorded there.
- Is Wenche a male or female name?
- Wenche is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Wenche mean?
- Recorded meaning: from OE wencel ‘child’; first attested Godwin Wenche 1204 Cur (D)
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wencheThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Wenche” — the 76th most common given name in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.