a given name has been popular in honour of Hywel Dda since the Middle Ages.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century pseudohistorical Historia regum Britanniae, there is mention of a late 5th and early 6th-century Brittonic king known as Hywel the Great, said to be born in around 500 AD. This is the earliest claimed account of the name, although Hywel the Great is