Wendy is a girl's name, and in most learners' dictionaries it appears because of one particular Wendy: Wendy Darling, the older sister in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904). Peter flies in through her bedroom window and takes her and her two brothers to Neverland, where she looks after the Lost Boys. She is the character who has to grow up, while Peter never does — that contrast is the heart of the story. Barrie is usually credited with inventing the name, or at least with making it a real name people give their daughters: he said it came from a small child who called him 'Fwendy-Wendy', a child's way of saying 'friend'. Before the play the name was very rare; afterwards it became common, especially in Britain and America in the middle of the twentieth century, so today it can sound like a name from your mother's or grandmother's generation. You will also meet 'Wendy house' in British English, meaning a small playhouse for children — named after the little house the Lost Boys build for Wendy.