As an English name, it has been used occasionally since the 12th century. It is the name of a central character in Shakespeare's play The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594).
This was the name of a 13th-century Italian saint who made clothes for the poor. As an English name, it has never been common.
As an English name, it became popular due to the Fleetwood Mac song Rhiannon (1976), especially in the United Kingdom and Australia.
This name can also be given in reference to the city in Italy, as in the case of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), who was born there to British parents. She was a nurse in military hospitals during the Crimean War and is usually considered the founder of modern nursing.
This name has been used in the English-speaking world since the Protestant Reformation. In America it received a boost in popularity after the birth of Esther Cleveland (1893-1980), the daughter of President Grover Cleveland [1].
Famous bearers of the name include the English poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), the German-Czech philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), the first person to climb Mount Everest.
This name enjoyed a brief revival in the early 1980s, thanks to the character of Afton Cooper from the popular American television series Dallas (1978-1991).