Maretta
Feminine
Maretta is a Mary with an Italian ending, made in an American decade when almost any woman's name beginning Ma- was a Mary underneath. The ending had its own long career and carried a piece of French history with it.
How old is the name Maretta?
Maretta first appears in US birth records in 1898 — 127 years ago. The typical Maretta alive today was born around 1953, making them about 72 years old. About 600 people named Maretta are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Maretta most popular?
Maretta peaked in 1898, reaching #1502 nationally. See the whole 1898 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
Our story of Maretta
The nearest relative of this name is a town. When the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory was laid out on the Ohio River, the settlers named it Marietta — after Marie Antoinette, in gratitude for the French support that had made their revolution winnable. A frontier town in Ohio, named for a queen of France who would be dead within four years of the naming, by men who had fought a war with her money. Names cross oceans that way and lose their reasons: within a generation Marietta was simply a place, and by the next century it and its relatives were simply names, with the gratitude and the guillotine both a long way out of sight.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The front is almost certainly Mary or Margaret, which were so common in the period that a new name beginning this way rarely meant anything else. The Hebrew name behind Mary has never been explained. The ending is an Italian diminutive borrowed into English as decoration and carries no meaning of its own.
Pronouncing Maretta
muh-RET-uh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The doubled t keeps the vowel before it short.
Nicknames for Maretta
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
- 1898
- Most girls named
- 195025 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1502reached in 1898
- Change vs 2005
- +20.0%6 in 2014, from 5
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.
Maretta in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Marietta in Italian — related form
Marettas among us
people named Maretta 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
Maretta 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
- It is read correctly on sight and contains nothing difficult.
- It carries vintage short forms that are having their own revival.
- It is rare while sounding entirely familiar.
- Marietta and Maretta will be confused constantly, and the longer one is far better known.
- The ending dates the name to a particular stretch of American use.
- There is no meaning in either half that can be stated confidently.
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Maretta
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Marettas 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 Maretta are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Maretta in 2025?
- Maretta is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Maretta with classmates?
- Maretta will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Maretta? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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