Name Awesome

Aretha

Girls' name

Possibly virtue

Aretha has been given to 5,656 babies in the U.S. since 1900. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1968, with 543 recorded.

Babies named Aretha, 2023

1 in 552,000

Aretha over time, 1880–2025

Girls
020040060018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Aretha: meaning, origin, and history

Possibly virtue

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Aretha means

Aretha may mean “virtue”.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Aretha is used in English.

Another recorded pronunciation is /ə.ˈɹiː.θə/ for Aretha.

Origin, language, and formation

Aretha is used in Cebuano.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 5,656 girls were recorded with the name Aretha between 1900 and 2023. Its highest annual count was 543 in 1968; its best national rank was #398 in 1968.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Aretha?

Aretha had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2023, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2023
1 in 552,000
6 of 3,314,783 births
Among girls only
1 in 267,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2023
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
382,940 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Aretha sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2023 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 382,940 children born in 2023 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Aretha. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Arethas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Aretha was born before 1968 — so the typical Aretha is around 57 today.

Median birth year
1968
About 57 years old
Biggest decade
1960s
35.5% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
1.5%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
4,372
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1960s — 35.5% of all recorded uses (2,008).

Is Aretha rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1968 (543)
Years since peak
57
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
20.9% average annual change
Best rank ever
#398
1968

Spellings of Aretha

Aretha is not the most common spelling — Martha is, with 74.6% against Aretha's 0.76%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Aretha is used

Across 1910–2025, Aretha was most concentrated in Mississippi — about 1 in 7,143 girls, against 1 in 42,244 across all states with data. It was least common in Wisconsin (1 in —).

014 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Mississippi1 in 7,143
  2. 2Alabama1 in 11,111
  3. 3Georgia1 in 14,286
  4. 4Arkansas1 in 16,667
  5. 5Louisiana1 in 25,000
  6. 6South Carolina1 in 25,000
  7. 7Virginia1 in 25,000
  8. 8District of Columbia1 in 33,333

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Aretha has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Aretha around the world

Where Aretha ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2002–2022
    #4,646
    in 2022
  • France
    2018–2018
    #6,800
    in 2018
  • Canada
    2024–2024
    #3,457
    in 2024

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Statistics Canada. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Notable people named Aretha

People whose public names include Aretha, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Aretha in other languages

Cross-language forms and variants of Aretha. Linked forms have their own page here.

Areta

Variant forms from Wikidata (CC0). Most are used mainly outside the United States; U.S. birth records statistics cover US usage only.

Aretha by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#398
1968
Peak year
1968
543 that year
First recorded
1900
Last recorded
2023
All-time count
5,656
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Aretha

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

AreliAreathaArelyArelisAgathaArelysArellaTalithaLeathaAreebaDorthaAlethaArettaAreliaArellyAreejEarthaArenaTabathaReathaDorothaAreyaSamathaBirtha

Names with a curve like Aretha

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Aretha, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

TonjaShelliTrenaMissyTresaMechelleShellieDedraLolitaTroyTamelaJuli

Sibling names for Aretha

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Aretha

Top names of 1968, Aretha's peak yearThe 1960s in fullOther names that peaked in 1968Girls' names starting with A