- Position: Civilian lounge hostess
- Species/gender: El-Aurian female
- Place of birth: El-Auria
- Marital status: Single, twice married
- Children: Several
- Former Quarters: U.S.S. Enterprise: Deck 8, Room 3150
- Former Office: U.S.S. Enterprise: Adjacent to Ten-Forward lounge, Deck 10
This female member of the scattered yet long-lived El-Aurian "Listener" race became the civilian hostess of the U.S.S. Enterprise's Ten-Forward lounge at Picard's invitation in early 2365, dispensing her trade's time-honored craft of advice while remaining mute about her own background. At Ten-Forward, she kept a selection of alcoholic beverages for special occasions in opposition to Starfleet's synthehol regulations and made herself available to anyone in need, especially the senior staff, as an informal counselor.
Well over 600 years old now, Guinan hid out from her father on Earth in AD 1893 as a mature adult and had an imaginary Tarcassian razor beast as a childhood pet -- and still finds time to "talk" to him. She herself has been married at least twice and has "a lot" of children. One of her offspring "wouldn't listen to anybody" -- a rarity in a species of listeners -- but he "grew out of it after several hundred years." Her family also includes her father, who is over 700 years old and had pursued her nearly 400 years earlier to come home, and a maternal-side Uncle Terkim, the "black sheep" of the family.
In the 2160s, Guinan first encountered the Q entity, and both mutually consider the other an implacable enemy -- though she went by a different name then. A century later she was not present when her people were attacked by the Borg and scattered from their home system thousands of light-years from Federation space -- though she was aboard the refugee-filled S.S. Lakul some 27 years later near Earth, in 2293, when part of her being was trapped in the same Nexus ribbon which destroyed her ship and a sister El-Aurian craft and caused the apparent death of Captain James T. Kirk. Following the incident, Guinan developed what otherwise would be dubbed a "sixth sense."
Though usually a calm and reasoned observer, Guinan's personal life proved fitful and she held long grudges against both Q and the Borg as enemies -- though even she relented against the latter when "Hugh" Borg proved civilized when cut off from the collective in 2368. She coyly says her relationship with Picard goes "beyond friendship and beyond family," and had earlier claimed she liked bald-headed men; she has vaguely spoken of "serious trouble" that she escaped thanks to the trust of Picard; in return, he once observed that "Guinan is very selective about whom she calls a friend."
No stranger to the phaser range, she once beat Worf on Level 14, firing left-handed, and she silenced a dream-deprived paranoid mob in Ten-Forward with an energy-beam rifle hidden behind the bar. She has also been coached in fencing by Picard, begun when she considered exercise to strengthen her arm in 2368.