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Updated June 9, 2019

Boy name origins & meanings

  • German : Bold friend

Boy name variations

How Popular Is The Name Baldwin

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements bald ‘bold’, ‘brave’ + wine ‘friend’, which was extremely popular among the Normans and in Flanders in the early Middle Ages. It was the personal name of the Crusader who in 1100 became the first Christian king of Jerusalem, and of four more Crusader kings of Jerusalem. It was also borne by Baldwin, Count of Flanders (1172–1205), leader of the Fourth Crusade, who became first Latin Emperor of Constantinople (1204). As an American surname it has absorbed Dutch spellings such as Boudewijn.
  • Irish : surname adopted in Donegal by bearers of the Gaelic name Ó Maolagáin (see Milligan), due to association of Gaelic maol ‘bald’, ‘hairless’ with English bald.
  • A John Baldwin from Buckinghamshire, England, arrived in the U.S. in 1638 and settled in Milford, CT.

Famous people with this last name

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