Margarette
Feminine · “Greek margarites”
The word for a pearl traveled the whole length of the ancient trade routes. Greek margarites came from an eastern source, probably Iranian, ultimately perhaps from a Sanskrit word for a pearl or a flower bud. It reached Latin, then every European language, and then became one of the most used women's names on the continent.
How old is the name Margarette?
Margarette was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Margarette alive today was born around 1928, making them about 97 years old. About 2,000 people named Margarette are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Margarette most popular?
Margarette peaked in 1921, reaching #492 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 7,870 places below that high. See the whole 1921 chart.
Where it comes from
From margarites to Margarette
The story of Margarette
Pearls came from the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and the word came with them along the same routes. Greek had it by the fourth century BC, when Theophrastus writes about the stone, and Latin took it from Greek. What happened afterwards is a good demonstration of how a borrowed word settles: in French margarita became marguerite and was applied to the ox-eye daisy, whose white petals around a yellow center suggested the gem, so that the French word now means the flower more often than the jewel. Italian kept margherita for both and gave it to a pizza in 1889, named for a queen. The name became enormously popular in medieval Europe through Saint Margaret of Antioch, whose legend involves being swallowed by a dragon and emerging alive, which made her a patron of childbirth and one of the most invoked saints in Christendom.
Meaning
Greek margarites, a pearl
From Greek margarites, a pearl, a word Greek borrowed from an eastern language, probably through Old Persian, with a possible ultimate source in Sanskrit manjari. Latin margarita gave the French Marguerite, which is also the word for a daisy. Margarette is a French-influenced English spelling with a doubled t and a final e, and peaks in the American data in 1921.
How the name formed
- margarites
- margarita
- Margaret
- Margarette
Related forms: Marguerite · Margherita · Margarita
Pronouncing Margarette
MAR-guh-ret
Three syllables, stress on the first. The final e is silent. mar-guh-RET, with the stress at the end on the French model, is also heard for this spelling and is what the doubled t and final e suggest.
Nicknames for Margarette
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 1923185 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #492reached in 1921
- Change vs 2022
- +50.0%12 in 2025, 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.
Margarette in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Marguerite in French — same name
- Margherita in Italian — same name
- Margarita in Spanish — same name
Margarettes among us
people named Margarette are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Margarette
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Margarette
- #8362
- Margarette on the 2025 chart
- #941
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Margarette went to 12 girls in 2025, but Margarete is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 19, which makes it the 941st most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,421 places above the chart.
- Margarette12
- Margarete7
About 1 girl in 84,593 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Margarette 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 Celestine test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Margarette's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Celestine climbed just as high around 1902, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Celestine's path sketches the road Margarette is walking now.
Margarette 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
Margarette beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Margarette in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled and the word has a three-thousand-year history.
- It offers an unusually large set of short forms in different languages.
- The name is recognized across the whole of Europe.
- Margaret is the standard English spelling.
- Two stress patterns circulate for this variant.
- It reads as early twentieth century in American records.
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Margarette
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Margarettes are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,000 people named Margarette are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Margarette?
- Margarette is the most-used spelling in US records — 12 of the 19 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Margarete.
- How popular is the name Margarette in 2025?
- Margarette ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Margarette?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Margarette — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Margarette with classmates?
- Margarette will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Margarette
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Clementina#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Margarette? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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