Guadalupe

Meaning of Guadalupe

Guadalupe, long established as a feminine given name in Spanish-speaking societies, traces its lineage to the Marian title Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe—invoked first at the Castilian monastery of the same name and later at the 1531 apparition on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico—while linguistic reconstruction points to the Arabic-Iberian hydronym wādī al-lubb, “river (or valley) of the wolf,” thereby embedding geography, faith, and intercultural contact in a single lexical form. United States vital-statistics data confirm uninterrupted usage since the nineteenth century: the name reached a mid-century zenith near rank 250, has moved gradually lower with each generation, and in 2024 stands at rank 707 with 244 registrations—an attenuation that parallels shifts in Hispanic immigration patterns and the diversification of naming practices among U.S.-born Latino families. Diminutives such as Lupe and Lupita, readily adopted in Anglo-American settings, offer pragmatic flexibility without severing the connection to an enduring religious and cultural symbol; consequently, Guadalupe occupies a distinctive onomastic niche in which devotional heritage, linguistic complexity, and demographic history intersect.