[2] Occurring in the medieval legend of Madoc—the purported son of the 12th century historical Welsh ruler Owain Gwynedd by Brenda the daughter of a Viking overlord in Ireland[3]—the name Brenda was apparently until the 19th century confined to the Northern Isles being an evident remnant of the Northern Isles' Norse rule from 875 to 1470.
[15] In 1971, the UK satirical magazine Private Eye ran a pseudo-item that Queen Elizabeth II "is known as Brenda to her immediate staff" resulting in the name Brenda being used in the media as an irreverent nickname for the Queen.
[18][19] Named for her mother, whose own father Frederick Williams-Taylor was the son of Irish emigrants to Canada,[20] Brenda Frazier had first been mentioned in the press as a pre-teen due to her parents' 1925–26 high-profile divorce and subsequent parental custody battle over Frazier, whose first name of Brenda, consequently, began appearing in the annual tally of the Top 1000 most popular names for newborn American girls from 1925, when it was ranked at #977.
The full-force of Frazier's 27 December 1938 coming-out ball — which generated headlines fêting her as "the debutante of the century" — was evident when the name Brenda appeared for the first time among the Top 100 names for newborn American girls — at #86 — in the tally for the subsequent year 1939,[21] with the cachet with which Frazier imbued the name Brenda evidenced by two Hollywood movie studios conferring the name on their respective 1939 "discoveries": Brenda Joyce[22] and Brenda Marshall[23] (although neither actress would herself generate significant star-power).
Last ranked in the Top 50 of the most popular names for American newborn girls in the tally for 1972 — at #44 — the name Brenda made its last Top 100 ranking to date — at #91 — on the respective tally for the year 1977.