Earlene
Feminine · “nobleman”
Earlene is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 14,165 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Earlene is the English rank made feminine — an earl was a nobleman under the Anglo-Saxons, and the word is one of the few English titles that is not Norman French.
How old is the name Earlene?
Earlene first appears in US birth records in 1901 — 124 years ago. The typical Earlene alive today was born around 1943, making them about 82 years old. About 7,100 people named Earlene are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Earlene most popular?
Earlene peaked in 1938, reaching #314 nationally. See the whole 1938 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From eorl to Earlene
The story of Earlene
Earl became a common American given name in the nineteenth century, among the rank-names — Earl, Duke, King, Prince — that American families used without irony. Feminine forms followed in the twentieth century: Earlene, Earline and Earleen were all registered, built the way Charlene and Darlene were built. Earlene peaked around 1946.
Meaning
nobleman, warrior
From Earl, the Old English eorl, 'nobleman' or 'warrior', with the feminine -ene ending. Eorl is genuinely native English, unlike duke, count and baron, which all came with the Normans. The -ene is a twentieth-century American suffix rather than an inherited element.
How the name formed
- eorl
- Earl
- Earlene
Related forms: Earline · Erlene
Pronouncing Earlene
ur-LEEN
Two syllables, stress on the second. Earlene, Earline and Earleen are said identically.
Nicknames for Earlene
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
- 1901
- Most girls named
- 1947407 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #314reached in 1938
- Change vs 1998
- −16.7%5 in 2007, 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.
Earlene in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Earline in English — spelling variant
- Erlene in English — spelling variant
Earlenes among us
people named Earlene 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
Earlene 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
- Earl is a genuinely native English word, which very few titles are.
- The end stress gives it a strong rhythm against a front-stressed surname.
- It records a documented American practice of naming from ranks.
- Several spellings of the sound were in use at once.
- The -ene ending is a twentieth-century addition rather than an inherited part.
- It is strongly period-coded to the 1940s.
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Earlene
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Earlenes are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 7,100 people named Earlene are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Earlene in 2025?
- Earlene is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Earlene with classmates?
- Earlene will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More E names
The most-given names starting with E, all years combined.
Elizabeth#17 · Emily#34 · Emma#3 · Evelyn#8 · Ella#29 · Eleanor#12 · Erin#833 · Edna#2458
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Earlene? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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