Gladys
/ˈɡlædɪs/
Gladys proper noun: a female given name from Welsh.
Proper noun
Gladys
- A female given name from Welsh.
- Gladys was the eldest daughter of the house, and when her parents had chosen her name – a name which they considered emblematic of happiness, in spite of certain questionings that had arisen among the name fanciers on the subject – it would seem that some unseen fairy godmother had really bestowed...1882, Edna Lyall, Donovan
- Anthony continued the prophecy:
"Of course Gladys and Eleanor, having graced the last generation of heroines and being at present in their social prime, will be passed on to the next generation of shopgirls -"1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, (please specify |book=1, 2, or 3)
Forms of Gladys
| alternative form | Gwladys |
|---|
Origin of Gladys
Anglicized from Welsh Gwladus, of uncertain origin, perhaps connected with gwlad (“country”).
Questions about Gladys
- What does Gladys mean?
- Gladys means a female given name from Welsh.
- What part of speech is Gladys?
- Gladys is a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce Gladys?
- Gladys is pronounced /ˈɡlædɪs/.
Words near Gladys in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Gladys (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Gladys.wav.
Cite this entry: “Gladys.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gladys. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.