Alta

About Alta

Alta is a short feminine name with a proposed connection to words meaning “high.” Its American history reaches back well before its early twentieth-century popularity peak. Two particularly interesting bearers are Alta May Hulett, a pioneer in the Illinois legal profession, and the writer and publisher known as Alta, whose press helped bring feminist voices into print.

Meaning and background

Alta may derive from Latin altus, meaning “high,” or from the related Italian and Spanish word alto. The connection is plausible rather than certain. The name’s established use is clearer than the precise circumstances in which it first became a personal name.

Alta May Hulett

Alta May Hulett became the first woman admitted to the Illinois bar. Born in 1854, she graduated from Rockford High School in 1870 at sixteen and initially worked as a schoolteacher. She studied law in the evenings before continuing her training in the office of Rockford lawyer William Lathrop.

Her first application to practice was rejected. Hulett then worked for legislation opening occupations to women, arguing both that women had a right to enter the profession and that they had the intellectual ability to practice law. After the law changed, she took the examination again in 1873 and achieved its highest score. She entered the profession at nineteen and practiced in Chicago. Her career was brief: she died on March 26, 1877, before her twenty-third birthday.

Hulett also became the first woman to hold the office of notary public in Illinois, extending her pioneering legal work beyond admission to the bar.

Alta and feminist publishing

The writer known as Alta founded Shameless Hussy Press in 1969. Emerging from Berkeley’s counterculture and the second wave of feminism, the press created opportunities for writers whose work had struggled to find a publisher. Its history includes early books by Pat Parker, Mitsuye Yamada, Ntozake Shange, and Susan Griffin.

An oral history preserved by the University of California, Santa Cruz covers the press’s life from 1969 to 1989. It places Alta’s work as a publisher alongside her development as a writer and the practical effort involved in sustaining an independent press. This association gives the name a place in literary history through the person making books possible, as well as through the authors themselves.

American use

Alta’s strongest American ranking for girls was #137 in 1881, when 114 births were recorded. Its largest annual count came much later, in 1918, with 820 girls. The different dates reflect the distinction between a name’s position among other names and the actual number of children receiving it.

By 2000, Alta was recorded for 24 girls, and in 2025 for 33, ranking #4,266. It remains a rare full name with a documented nineteenth-century American presence. The early statistics also show that its history as a given name predates the publishing movement associated with its later literary bearer.

How popular is Alta?

In 2025, Alta ranked #4,266 among girls in the United States, with 33 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 820 in 1918. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.