Name Evelyn Origin, meaning, pronunciation & popularity of the name Evelyn

Evelyn is a ♀ girl’s name and a ♂ boy’s name. Evelyn thus belongs to the gender-neutral unisex names.

What is the origin of the name Evelyn?

Evelyn is today considered a variation of the biblical name Eva, but originally derived from the name Aveline. In Germany, Evelyn is a feminine name, but in English speaking countries, it is a unisex name.

What does the name Evelyn mean?

Evelyn means “life”, “living one”, “source of life” or “mother of life” (from Eve) and “strength”, “desired” or “little bird” (from Avelina).

Evelyn as a unisex name

Evelyn is a unisex name of biblical and Germanic heritage. In German speaking areas, it is only used for girls. Evelyn is a beautiful name with a lot of desirable meanings. As nicknames, you could use Eve, Lynn or El. Other spelling possibilities are Evelynn, Evelin and Evelien. If you chose Evelyn for a boy, Evelyn Tobias, Evelyn Parker, Evelyn Theodore, Evelyn Jay and Evelyn William are good options. If your little girl should have the name Evelyn, you can chose: Evelyn Leigh, Evelyn Birdie, Evelyn Alyse, Evelyn Charlotte, Evelyn Amelia or Evelyn Iris as middle name combinations.

Famous people named Evelyn

• One famous daughter is Evelyn Penn Willis, the youngest daughter of actor Bruce Willis. Bruce has a total of five daughters - three of them with his first wife, actress Demi Moore, and two more with his second wife Emma Heming. Nestle Evelyn was born in 2014 and enjoys life with four big sisters.
• The adopted daughter of Albert Einstein’s son Hans was named Evelyn Einstein (1941 - 2011). She was adopted immediately after her birth by Hans Einstein, who held a professorship at the University of California Berkeley. Evelyn became famous because of the rumors surrounding her person, which said that she was the biological daughter of Albert Einstein and the adoption was only used to cover this up. However, it has not been proven whether this is true. Evelyn worked to locate Albert Einstein’s letter estate and sued in court for shares of his estate. She partially won the lawsuits and died before the planned completion of her memoirs.
• A historical woman named Evelyn is Evelyn Nesbit (1884 - 1967), who was discovered at a very young age by local artists in Pennsylvania, who were struck by her beauty and employed her as a model for photography and painting. Later, Evelyn worked as a dancer for the Broadway show of the musical “Florodora” in New York City. There, she caught the eye of star architect Stanford White, who wanted to be her lover, when she was sixteen and he himself was 47. White raped her, later on she appeared publicly as his “lover”. The affair was over, when White found another girl and Evelyn Nesbit went on to marry the rich Harry Kendall Thaw. The greatest scandal around Evelyn arose, when Thaw publicly shot White in the face at a theatre show, claiming to take revenge for all the young girls who where mistreated by White. Being rich and of great influence, Thaw never went to prison for his murder. He and Evelyn got divorced and after all these scandals, her career was never again as successful as before. She got small parts in movies and lived the majority of her life in poverty. Author Lucy Maud Montgomery claimed to have modeled her character “Anne” from the novel “Anne of Green Gables” after a picture she saw of Evelyn Nesbit.

More about the name Evelyn

• The novel The Seven Men of Evelyn Hugo (2017) by Taylor Jenkins Reid is about fictional Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo, who tells a journalist about her life in Hollywood. It’s about her love stories and how she had to hold her own in the male-dominated film industry.

Pronunciation of Evelyn

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