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Orpha

Girls' name

Form of Orpah

Orpha has been given to 5,974 babies in the U.S. since 1880. 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 1917, with 204 recorded.

Babies named Orpha, 2024

1 in 557,000

Orpha over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010020030018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Orpha: meaning, origin, and history

Form of Orpah

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Orpha means

Orpha is a form of Orpah.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Orpha is used in Biblical Greek, Biblical Latin and English.

Another recorded pronunciation is /ˈɔɹ.fə/ and /ˈɔː.fə/ for Orpha.

Meaning behind the documented name family

The name developed through Orpha → Orpah. The family’s meaning is “neck”, recorded in English with the source elements orpá.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Orpah.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 5,974 girls were recorded with the name Orpha between 1880 and 2024. Its highest annual count was 204 in 1917; its best national rank was #263 in 1885.

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 Orpha?

Orpha had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2024, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2024
1 in 557,000
6 of 3,342,801 births
Among girls only
1 in 270,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2024
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
386,177 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Orpha 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 2024 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 386,177 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Orpha. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Orphas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Orpha was born before 1917 — so the typical Orpha is around 108 today.

Median birth year
1917
About 108 years old
Biggest decade
1910s
23.5% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
0.64%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
376
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1910s — 23.5% of all recorded uses (1,404).

Is Orpha 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 1917 (204)
Years since peak
108
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
21.2% average annual change
Best rank ever
#263
1885

Spellings of Orpha

Orpha is not the most common spelling — Ora is, with 56.4% against Orpha's 8.6%.

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 Orpha is used

Across 1910–2025, Orpha was most concentrated in West Virginia — about 1 in 5,000 girls, against 1 in 45,899 across all states with data. It was least common in Washington (1 in —).

020 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1West Virginia1 in 5,000
  2. 2Kansas1 in 16,667
  3. 3Kentucky1 in 16,667
  4. 4North Dakota1 in 16,667
  5. 5Oklahoma1 in 16,667
  6. 6Iowa1 in 25,000
  7. 7Indiana1 in 25,000
  8. 8Minnesota1 in 25,000

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

Orpha around the world

Where Orpha 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.

  • France
    1900–2002
    #5,185
    in 2002

Popularity data from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0.

Notable people named Orpha

People whose public names include Orpha, 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.

Orpha 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
#263
1885
Peak year
1917
204 that year
First recorded
1880
Last recorded
2024
All-time count
5,974
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Orpha

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

AlphaDelphaZelphaOrpahZilphaOphaOrphiaEuphaJosephaZephaBophaSyphaZylphaOrphieElphaCleophaRaphaLephaSophaDalphaRalphaDorphaAdolpha

Names with a curve like Orpha

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

BlanchArtieFloyMaybelleClydeCecilZulaMittieLydaGertieEraVesta

Sibling names for Orpha

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 Orpha

Top names of 1917, Orpha's peak yearThe 1910s in fullOther names that peaked in 1885More old lady namesGirls' names starting with O