Evelyn at a glance
- Meaning
- “uncertain, perhaps desired”
- Gender
- Girl
- Origin
- Germanic
- Pronunciation
- EV-uh-lin
- Nicknames
- Evie, Eve
- Other forms
- Evelina, Eveline, Aveline
Where the name Evelyn comes from
Evelyn comes from an English surname, which came from the Norman girls’ name Aveline; that probably goes back to a Germanic word, but its meaning is not certain. At first it was used for both boys and girls, as with the writer Evelyn Waugh. Today it is almost always a girls’ name and one of the most popular in the US.