Retha — girls' name

What the Data Says About Retha

The Social Security Administration has registered 10,597 babies named Retha between 1884 and 2014, spanning 131 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Retha currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2014. The name reached its historical peak in 1924, when 252 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Retha performed strongest in the 1920s, accumulating 2,078 births during that ten-year window. Across the 14 decades of recorded activity, Retha shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in North Carolina, which accounts for 970 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Georgia and Texas. In total, SSA state-level files list Retha in 24 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Retha 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 10,597 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.