Penelope

peh-NEL-oh-pee

Hear it spoken aloud with our AI pronunciation tool.

The name Penelope means “weaver, with a web over her face.” It comes from the Greek language tradition.

Penelope, wife of Odysseus, is the archetype of faithfulness and clever resourcefulness in Western literature. She wove and unwove a shroud for twenty years to delay suitors while awaiting her husband's return, making her name synonymous with patience, intelligence, and devotion.

From the Greek Πηνελόπη, connected either to pēnē, meaning thread or weft, or to pēnelops, a kind of duck. The weaving derivation suits her story so precisely that it may be a later rationalisation, and ancient sources already disagreed about which came first.

Penelope holds Ithaca for twenty years by unpicking each night the shroud she weaves by day, deferring the suitors until Odysseus returns — a stratagem that made her a byword for both fidelity and cunning. The name saw little English use until the twentieth century and rose sharply after 2000, entering the American top thirty.

• Penelope Cruz (Academy Award-winning Spanish actress)
• Penelope Fitzgerald (Booker Prize-winning British novelist)

Sibling names that share Penelope's rhythm and register without echoing it too closely.