Arletha
Feminine
Arletha ends in two letters that English uses for two entirely different sounds, and gives no indication which is meant. The th of thin and the th of this are separate consonants that happen to share a spelling, an accident inherited from scribes who abandoned the two letters Old English had for them. On a familiar word nobody notices. On a name met for the first time, it is a coin toss.
How old is the name Arletha?
Arletha first appears in US birth records in 1900 — 125 years ago. The typical Arletha alive today was born around 1951, making them about 74 years old. About 900 people named Arletha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Arletha most popular?
Arletha peaked in 1903, reaching #1204 nationally. See the whole 1903 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Bertha and Martha heard as a rhyming pair to Arletha
Our story of Arletha
The ending here came from a pair of names English has always heard as a matched set, and they are not related in the slightest. Bertha is Germanic, built on a word meaning bright, and it belonged to Charlemagne's mother. Martha is Aramaic, and it is one of the very few names in the New Testament that is simply a word in the language Jesus spoke, meaning lady or mistress of a house. They arrived in English from different continents and different centuries, they rhyme, and the rhyme was enough. By the nineteenth century the -tha ending was being treated as a piece of equipment: something that could be fastened to a front and would produce a woman's name, whatever the front happened to be. That is what happened here. The name is a joint between two unrelated traditions, and it is an entirely ordinary thing for a language to build.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The name is an American construction and no source can be established for it. It joins a front that belongs to the Arlene and Arletta family with an ending borrowed from names like Bertha and Martha, and neither piece brings a meaning with it. Reference works that offer a translation are supplying one. What can be described accurately is the workshop the name came out of, which is more useful than an invented gloss.
How the name formed
- Bertha and Martha heard as a rhyming pair
- The -tha ending treated as detachable
- Fastened to the Arlene and Arletta front
- Arletha in American registers
Pronouncing Arletha
ar-LEE-thuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The th is the voiceless one, as in thin, in most American families, though the spelling does not say so and the other reading is heard. It is worth stating which you mean at an introduction, because nobody can tell from the page.
Nicknames for Arletha
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
- 1900
- Most girls named
- 195938 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1204reached in 1903
- Change vs 1986
- −12.5%7 in 1993, from 8
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.
Arlethas among us
people named Arletha 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
Arletha 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
- The rhythm is long and even, and the name carries well when said in full.
- Letha and Thea are both waiting inside it, and they are strikingly different from each other.
- It is genuinely unshared: almost nobody meeting your child will have met the name before.
- The th could be either English sound and the spelling gives no help at all.
- There is no meaning to give, and the honest answer describes how the name was built.
- It sits close to Aretha and Arletta on paper and will be confused with both.
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Arletha
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Arlethas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Arletha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Arletha in 2025?
- Arletha is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Arletha with classmates?
- Arletha 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 Arletha? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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