Garret
Masculine
Garret is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 13,247 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Garrett is two different Germanic names that collapsed into one, which is why it has two etymologies and neither is wrong. Gerard, brave with a spear, and Gerald, ruling with a spear, both wore down to the same medieval English form, and Garret is the single-t spelling of the result.
How old is the name Garret?
Garret first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Garret alive today was born around 1994, making them about 31 years old. About 12,000 people named Garret are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Garret most popular?
Garret peaked in 2000, reaching #420 nationally. Today it ranks #7194, 6,774 places below that high. See the whole 2000 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Gerhard to Garret
The story of Garret
The merger happened in England and Ireland between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and Ireland is where the name became most firmly established — the Fitzgerald family made Gearóid a standard Irish name, and Garrett is its anglicization. From Ireland it traveled to America as both surname and given name. The modern American revival is later: Garrett climbs steadily from the 1970s and peaks around 2000, in the surname-as-first-name wave that also carried Grant, Brady and Cole. Garret with one t follows the same curve about one-tenth as high, peaking in 2000 as well, which is the normal relationship between a major spelling and its simplified variant.
Meaningscholars disagree
Germanic "spear-brave" or "spear-ruler"
Both source names share the first element ger, a spear. Gerard adds hard, brave or hardy; Gerald adds wald, rule. In medieval England the two were pronounced so similarly that they merged into Garrett, and by the time it became a hereditary surname the distinction was lost. Which one any given family's Garrett descends from cannot be recovered. The English word garret, an attic room, is unrelated: it comes from Old French garite, a watchtower.
How the name formed
- Gerhard
- Gerard
- Garrett
- Garret
Related forms: Gearóid · Garrett · Gerhard · Gérard
Pronouncing Garret
GARR-ut
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the second reduced. The single t does not change the sound; English does not lengthen the vowel before a doubled consonant here.
Nicknames for Garret
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
- 1881
- Most boys named
- 1999527 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #420reached in 2000
- Change vs 2023
- −45.0%11 in 2025, from 20
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.
Garret in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gearóid in Irish — same name
- Garrett in English — spelling variant
- Gerhard in German — related form
- Gérard in French — related form
Garrets among us
people named Garret are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 155,280 born in 2025 was named Garret
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Garret
- #7194
- Garret on the 2025 chart
- #488
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Garret went to 11 boys in 2025, but Garrett and Garett are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 543, which makes it the 488th most-given boys’ name of the year — 6,706 places above the chart.
About 1 boy in 3,146 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 155,280 for Garret itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Olen test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Garret's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Olen climbed just as high around 1913, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Olen's path sketches the road Garret is walking now.
Garret sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Garret beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Garret in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It has two genuine Germanic etymologies, both documented.
- It is instantly familiar and never mispronounced.
- Both Gary and Rhett work as short forms.
- The double-t Garrett is far more common and will be written by default.
- It is also an English word for an attic, though the connection is false.
- The 1990s and 2000s peak dates a bearer fairly precisely.
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What they receive
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Garret
Masculine · #7194 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Garrets are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,000 people named Garret are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Garret?
- Garret is one of 3 recorded spellings. Garrett is the more common one — 526 births in 2025 against 11 for Garret.
- How popular is the name Garret in 2025?
- Garret ranks #7194 among US boy names in 2025, with 11 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Garret?
- About 1 in every 155,280 US boys born in 2025 was named Garret — 11 in all.
- Will my child share the name Garret with classmates?
- Garret will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Garret
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Junius#7194 · Orie#7194 · Shade#7194 · Chesley#7194 · Joesph#7194 · Lofton#7194 · Macon#7194 · Benjiman#7194
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Garret? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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