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Retha

Girls' name

Short form of Margaretha

Retha has been given to 10,597 babies in the U.S. since 1884. 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 1924, with 252 recorded.

Babies named Retha, 2014

1 in 741,000

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Retha: meaning, origin, and history

Short form of Margaretha

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Retha means

Retha is a short form of Margaretha.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Retha is used in Afrikaans and English.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Margaretha.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 10,597 girls were recorded with the name Retha between 1884 and 2014. Its highest annual count was 252 in 1924; its best national rank was #431 in 1901.

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.

How common is Retha?

Retha had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2014, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2014
1 in 741,000
5 of 3,706,812 births
Among girls only
1 in 357,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2014
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
513,874 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Retha 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 2014 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 513,874 children born in 2014 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Retha. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Rethas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Retha was born before 1936 — so the typical Retha is around 89 today.

Median birth year
1936
About 89 years old
Biggest decade
1920s
19.6% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
0.53%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
2,923
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1920s — 19.6% of all recorded uses (2,078).

Is Retha 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 1924 (252)
Years since peak
101
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
25.3% average annual change
Best rank ever
#431
1901

Spellings of Retha

Retha is not the most common spelling — Ruth is, with 43.9% against Retha's 0.56%.

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 Retha is used

Across 1910–2025, Retha was most concentrated in Arkansas — about 1 in 2,941 girls, against 1 in 16,498 across all states with data. It was least common in Pennsylvania (1 in —).

034 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Arkansas1 in 2,941
  2. 2Oklahoma1 in 3,846
  3. 3West Virginia1 in 4,000
  4. 4North Carolina1 in 4,762
  5. 5South Carolina1 in 5,000
  6. 6Georgia1 in 5,882
  7. 7Mississippi1 in 6,250
  8. 8Kentucky1 in 6,667

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

Retha around the world

Where Retha 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.

  • South Australia
    2007–2007
    #803
    in 2007

Popularity data from Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Retha

People whose public names include Retha, 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.

Retha in other languages

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

Rheta

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

Retha 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
#431
1901
Peak year
1924
252 that year
First recorded
1884
Last recorded
2014
All-time count
10,597
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Retha

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

RettaAgathaRetaLethaTabathaRetalAlthaAlethaDorthaRetajLeathaRuthaTalithaArethaArthaDorethaTabithaEarthaReathaDorothaSamathaBirthaBerthaTabetha

Names with a curve like Retha

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

FreidaMelvaDelmaMariettaGeorgeJannieVeldaDelphineRowenaBennieJoeFreddie

Sibling names for Retha

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 Retha

Top names of 1924, Retha's peak yearThe 1920s in fullOther names that peaked in 1901Girls' names starting with RAfrikaans Girl Names