Garth
Masculine · “Old Norse gardr”
Asgard and Leningrad contain the same word. Norse gardr, an enclosure, is cognate with Slavic grad, a fortified town, and both descend from a root for something fenced in. English got yard, garden and garth from it, and a garth is still the enclosed space inside a cloister.
How old is the name Garth?
Garth first appears in US birth records in 1906 — 119 years ago. The typical Garth alive today was born around 1961, making them about 64 years old. About 6,600 people named Garth are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Garth most popular?
Garth peaked in 1954, reaching #444 nationally. Today it ranks #8910, 8,466 places below that high. See the whole 1954 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From gardr to Garth
The story of Garth
The root is one of the most productive in Indo-European and its descendants are everywhere once you know the shape. Norse gardr gives garth, and the -garth in northern English place names, and Asgard, the enclosure of the gods, and Midgard, the middle enclosure where people live. English has yard from the native form and garden from the Norman French borrowing of a Germanic word, so the same root arrives three times by three routes. German has Garten and the -gart in Stuttgart. Slavic has grad and gorod, a fortified town, in Belgrade, Novgorod, Leningrad and the ordinary Russian word for a city. Latin has hortus, a garden, and the English horticulture built on it. All of them are an enclosed piece of ground, and the semantic distance between a cloister garth and a Soviet city is entirely a matter of scale.
Meaning
Old Norse gardr, an enclosure
Garth is from Old Norse gardr, an enclosure, yard or garden, borrowed into northern English where it means a small enclosed piece of ground, especially the yard of a house or the open space inside a cloister. It became a surname for someone who lived by one. The American peak of the given name is 1954.
How the name formed
- gardr
- garth
- Garth
Related forms: Gardr · Garthe
Pronouncing Garth
GARTH
One syllable. The th is the voiceless sound of thin, not the voiced one of this.
Nicknames for Garth
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
- 1906
- Most boys named
- 1954268 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #444reached in 1954
- Change vs 2023
- −63.6%8 in 2025, from 22
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.
Garth in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gardr in Old Norse — related form
- Garthe in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Utah.
Garths among us
people named Garth are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 213,510 born in 2025 was named Garth
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Ivory test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Garth's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ivory climbed just as high around 1906, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ivory's path sketches the road Garth is walking now.
Garth 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
Garth beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Garth in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable with a single clear pronunciation.
- The Norse etymology is transparent and documented.
- It is short and distinctive without being unfamiliar.
- One country singer dominates recognition of the name.
- It is an obscure English word as well as a name.
- The 1954 peak places it in the mid-century.
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Garth
Masculine · #8910 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Garths are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,600 people named Garth are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Garth in 2025?
- Garth ranks #8910 among US boy names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Garth?
- About 1 in every 213,510 US boys born in 2025 was named Garth — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Garth with classmates?
- Garth will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Garth
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Davie#8910 · Ned#8910 · Darious#8910 · Alois#8910 · Len#8910 · Barton#8910 · Desmon#8910 · Winfield#8910
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Garth? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Garth and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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