From Old English 'milde' (gentle) and 'thryth' (strength), meaning 'gentle strength'.
Mildred carries one of the most storied Old English pedigrees of any name still in use, descending from the Anglo-Saxon Mildþryð — a compound of milde, meaning 'gentle' or 'mild,' and þryð, meaning 'strength' or 'power.' It is, at its heart, a name about the integration of softness and force. Its most celebrated early bearer was Saint Mildred of Thanet, a seventh-century abbess and granddaughter of a Kentish king, who became one of the most venerated saints of early medieval England and gave the name its first great wave of popularity.
Mildred crossed the Atlantic with English settlers and found particular favor in the United States through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cresting in extraordinary popularity during the 1910s and 1920s when it ranked among the top ten names for American girls. Its cultural high-water mark may be James M. Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce — a gritty story of ambition, sacrifice, and betrayal set in Depression-era California — later adapted into a celebrated Joan Crawford film and an HBO miniseries with Kate Winslet.
That story gave the name a complex, enduring literary afterlife. By mid-century, Mildred had become strongly associated with a specific generation, and its use fell sharply as naming fashions shifted toward softer sounds. Today it sits in a curious liminal space: dismissed by some as irredeemably dated, but quietly admired by others as a name ripe for revival — a grand old lady with genuine historical depth waiting to be rediscovered, as Eleanor and Hazel before it already have been.