Name Awesome

Merete

Girls' name

Form of Margrethe

Merete has been given to 12 babies in the U.S. since 1984. 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 1986, with 7 recorded.

Babies named Merete, 1986

1 in 508,000

Merete over time, 1880–2025

Girls
0246818801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Merete: meaning, origin, and history

Form of Margrethe

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Merete means

Merete is a form of Margrethe.

Origin, language, and formation

Merete is used in Danish and Norwegian.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Margrethe.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 12 girls were recorded with the name Merete between 1984 and 1986. Its highest annual count was 7 in 1986; its best national rank was #9,189 in 1986.

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 Merete?

Merete had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1986, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 1986
1 in 508,000
7 of 3,556,724 births
Among girls only
1 in 245,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 1986
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
352,192 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Merete 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 1986 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 352,192 children born in 1986 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Merete. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Meretes were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Merete was born before 1986 — so the typical Merete is around 39 today.

Median birth year
1986
About 39 years old
Biggest decade
1980s
100.0% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
100.0%
A modern name
Recorded since 1950
12
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1980s — 100.0% of all recorded uses (12).

Is Merete 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 1986 (7)
Years since peak
39
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Not enough data
Too few years
Best rank ever
#9,189
1986

Spellings of Merete

Merete is not the most common spelling — Merle is, with 42.6% against Merete's 0.03%.

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.

Merete around the world

Where Merete 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.

  • Norway
    1880–2005
    #479
    in 2005

Popularity data from Statistics Norway. SSB data under CC BY 4.0.

Merete 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
#9,189
1986
Peak year
1986
7 that year
First recorded
1984
Last recorded
1986
All-time count
12
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Merete

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

MervatMerrisMerliaMersanaMeryahMerceeMerrelMerwynMerleyMerayaMerelyMercanMeredyMernieMerimaMeralyMerakiMerolaMerdieMerenaMeriyaMerjemMerilouMeritt

Sibling names for Merete

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 Merete

Top names of 1986, Merete's peak yearThe 1980s in fullOther names that peaked in 1986Girls' names starting with MNorwegian Girl Names