Ethel — #4873 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Ethel

The Social Security Administration has registered 278,890 babies named Ethel between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Ethel currently holds the #4873 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1918, when 8,075 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Ethel performed strongest in the 1910s, accumulating 63,662 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Ethel shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Pennsylvania, which accounts for 16,133 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and North Carolina. In total, SSA state-level files list Ethel in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Ethel 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 278,890 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.