Aretha — girls' name

What the Data Says About Aretha

The Social Security Administration has registered 5,656 babies named Aretha between 1900 and 2023, spanning 124 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Aretha currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2023. The name reached its historical peak in 1968, when 543 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Aretha performed strongest in the 1960s, accumulating 2,008 births during that ten-year window. Across the 13 decades of recorded activity, Aretha shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Georgia, which accounts for 328 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and Mississippi. In total, SSA state-level files list Aretha in 28 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Aretha in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 5,656 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.