Was the name "Wendy" created for Peter Pan? I ran across something odd today... I have an iPhone app that lists facts, trivia, and other useless information (it's called Cool Facts, downloaded from iTunes). So far, nothing I've found on it has been terribly inaccurate. However, flipping through it today, I came across this: !The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before it. To say the very least, I'm skeptical. So the question is: **Was the name "Wendy" actually created by J.M. Barrie for _Peter Pan_?** Or, if this is a myth, does anyone know where it originated?

From The Straight Dope:

> All kidding aside, J. M. Barrie did not invent the name Wendy for his 1904 play Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (the book form of the story, Peter and Wendy, was published in 1911).
>
> But we have absolute proof that there were earlier Wendys, thanks to the just-released 1880 U.S. Census and the 1881 British Census (available here).
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> These documents show that the name Wendy, while not common, was indeed used in both the U.S. and Great Britain throughout the 1800s. I had no trouble finding twenty females with the first name Wendy in the United States, the earliest being Wendy Gram of Ohio (born in 1828).

Using the search above you can see the results for yourself.