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Merita

Girls' name

Multiple documented origins; meaning depends on tradition

Merita has been given to 1,121 babies in the U.S. since 1912. 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 1955, with 46 recorded.

Babies named Merita, 1999

1 in 527,000

Merita over time, 1880–2025

Girls
020406018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Merita: meaning, origin, and history

Multiple documented origins; meaning depends on tradition

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Merita means

Merita has more than one naming route in the cited origin entries: distinct naming traditions.

The naming story behind Merita

One of the source’s documented entries for Merita records a meaning of merit.

One of the source’s documented entries for Merita records a meaning of meritorious, worthy.

Origin, language, and formation

Merita is used in Albanian and Finnish.

Pronunciation and spelling

In Finnish, Merita is pronounced /ˈmeritɑ/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 1,121 girls were recorded with the name Merita between 1912 and 1999. Its highest annual count was 46 in 1955; its best national rank was #1,459 in 1940.

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 Merita?

Merita had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1999, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 1999
1 in 527,000
7 of 3,692,373 births
Among girls only
1 in 253,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 1999
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
365,624 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Merita 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 1999 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 365,624 children born in 1999 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Merita. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Meritas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Merita was born before 1951 — so the typical Merita is around 74 today.

Median birth year
1951
About 74 years old
Biggest decade
1950s
26.9% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
9.8%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
608
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1950s — 26.9% of all recorded uses (302).

Is Merita 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 1955 (46)
Years since peak
70
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
29.6% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,459
1940

Spellings of Merita

Merita is not the most common spelling — Maria is, with 36.6% against Merita's 0.07%.

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 Merita is used

Across 1910–2025, Merita was most concentrated in Georgia — about 1 in 100,000 girls, against 1 in 130,899 across all states with data. It was least common in Alabama (1 in —).

01 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Georgia1 in 100,000
  2. 2North Carolina1 in 100,000
  3. 3South Carolina1 in 100,000
  4. 4Alabama1 in —

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. Merita has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Merita around the world

Where Merita 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
    1997–2010
    #5,707
    in 2010
  • France
    1982–1999
    #4,251
    in 1999

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

Merita 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
#1,459
1940
Peak year
1955
46 that year
First recorded
1912
Last recorded
1999
All-time count
1,121
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Merita

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

MerariMerlinMeridaMerlynMeryemMeraryMercieMerrilyMerciMerrynAmritaMerrillMerrinMeriahMeriamMerrickKavitaMercerMertieJanitaMerrittIshitaMerriamMerisa

Sibling names for Merita

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 Merita

Top names of 1955, Merita's peak yearThe 1950s in fullOther names that peaked in 1940Girls' names starting with M