Although J.M. Barrie did not invent the name “Wendy”, it was he who made it popular in his 1904 book, Peter Pan. Before that, there were not a lot of Wendys in the world, if any. But I did have an ESL student years ago who told me that my name was actually Chinese. Weird. So I did some research on the internet and found that there were a couple of Chinese emporers named “Wen-di”. Very weird.
I’m not even sure why I even started this topic. Oh well, suffer through it.
When I was a kid, I remember thinking that Wendy would be a really unfortunate name for a middle-aged woman. My experience with middle-aged women at the time was limited to those named Anna or Susie or Tina or – and, of course, the more trendy names like Joyce, Marjorie, Marilyn, and Dorothy.
Now I am the middle-aged woman named Wendy, and it’s surprising how many of us there are.
Thank you, J.M. Barrie.
Chinese hey, well, maybe my call to China is a bit of a family thing…….