Penelope

Penelope is a Greek name best known from Homer’s Odyssey, where Penelope is the wife of Odysseus; she delays suitors by weaving a shroud and unraveling it each night, and she is celebrated for fidelity and cleverness. The Odyssey is the best-known early source for the name. The name’s deeper etymology is uncertain. Dictionaries connect it with Greek pene, meaning thread or weft, and with penelops, a kind of duck; because the evidence is ambiguous, they do not agree on a single meaning.

Both British and American English pronounce it puh-NEL-uh-pee, with the stress on the second syllable; Penny is the usual short form. Outside myth, the name belongs to the English actress Dame Penelope Wilton and to the British novelist Dame Penelope Lively, who won the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger.

In the United States, Penelope ranked 22nd in 2025, when 6,225 babies received the name. Its highest rank has been 21st, in 2022. In 2000 it stood at 1,412th, and the rise since then has been steep and sustained. It has remained in the top 30 every year since 2016.