Altha
Feminine · “healer”
Altha is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,365 girls against 21 boys since 1880.
Altha is Althea with the last vowel taken off, and Althea is a plant as much as a name. The Greek word behind it means healing, and it is still the botanical name of the marshmallow — the plant whose root gave the sweet its name long before anyone made one out of sugar and gelatine.
How old is the name Altha?
Altha was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Altha alive today was born around 1922, making them about 103 years old. About 600 people named Altha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Altha most popular?
Altha peaked in 1884, reaching #425 nationally. See the whole 1884 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Althaia to Altha
The story of Altha
Althaea in Greek myth is the mother of Meleager, and her story is a grim one about a burning brand and a life measured by it. The plant is the pleasanter half of the name's history: marsh mallow root is mucilaginous, it soothes a sore throat, and confectioners in France boiled it with sugar and egg white to make a medicine that people liked enough to keep eating after they stopped being ill. The modern sweet has no plant in it at all. Altha entered American records as a shortening of the classical name, in the same nineteenth-century wave that produced Ida and Cora, and it is recorded for boys as well as girls.
Meaning
healer
From a Greek verb meaning to heal or to cure. The same word names the marshmallow genus, because the plant's root was used for exactly that, and the sweet is named after the plant rather than the other way round.
How the name formed
- Althaia
- Althea
- Altha
Related forms: Althaia · Altea
Pronouncing Altha
AL-thuh
Two syllables with the weight at the front. The fuller Althea takes three, al-THEE-uh, with the weight in the middle.
Nicknames for Altha
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 191799 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #425reached in 1884
- Change vs 1970
- 0.0%6 in 1976, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Altha in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Althaia in Greek — transliteration
- Altea in Spanish — spelling variant
Althas among us
people named Altha are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Altha sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Two syllables, five letters, and no sound an English speaker has to learn.
- The meaning is settled, positive and connects to a real plant that can be shown.
- It has an unbroken run in American records from the first year they were kept.
- Althea is the fuller and commoner form and will be written instead.
- The spelling is recorded for boys as well as girls in the United States.
- It reads clearly as a name of the nineteenth century.
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Altha
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Althas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Altha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Altha in 2025?
- Altha is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Altha with classmates?
- Altha will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More A names
The most-given names starting with A, all years combined.
Anna#107 · Ashley#164 · Amanda#493 · Amy#257 · Angela#408 · Alice#65 · Ann#1076 · Andrea#235
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Altha? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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