Maritza
Feminine · “a diminutive of María”
Maritza is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 23,153 girls against 79 boys since 1880.
Maritza is what Spanish does to María when it wants to make it small and affectionate, and Spanish has a great many ways of doing that. The -itza ending is one of the less common ones, which is part of why the name reads as its own thing rather than as a nickname.
How old is the name Maritza?
Maritza first appears in US birth records in 1945 — 80 years ago. The typical Maritza alive today was born around 1993, making them about 32 years old. About 22,500 people named Maritza are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Maritza most popular?
Maritza peaked in 2005, reaching #403 nationally. Today it ranks #2822, 2,419 places below that high. See the whole 2005 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Miriam to Maritza
The story of Maritza
Spanish builds affectionate names with an unusually rich set of endings — Mariposa, Marisol, Maribel, Marita, Maritza — and several of them have become names in their own right rather than staying nicknames. Maritza is one of those: it is given as a full name across Latin America and among Spanish-speaking families in the United States, not as a short form of anything. Its American record sits mostly in the second half of the twentieth century and afterwards, and it arrived with Caribbean and Central American families more than with Mexican ones.
Meaningscholars disagree
a diminutive of María, whose own reading is unsettled
The Spanish road makes Maritza from María with a diminutive ending, and María's own meaning has never been settled — 'bitter', 'beloved' and an Egyptian source have all been argued for the Hebrew Miriam behind it. A second and unrelated road exists: the Maritsa is a major river running through Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, and Maritza is a name in the Balkans from it. The two have nothing to do with each other.
How the name formed
- Miriam
- María
- Maritza
Related forms: María · Maritsa · Marița
Pronouncing Maritza
mah-REET-sah
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The tz is said as a single ts sound, not as a z. English speakers often say muh-RIT-zuh with a z, which is the usual American simplification.
Nicknames for Maritza
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
- 1945
- Most girls named
- 2004735 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #403reached in 2005
- Change vs 2023
- −31.8%60 in 2025, from 88
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.
Maritza in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- María in Spanish — related form
- Maritsa in Bulgarian — related form
- Marița in Romanian — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Maritzas among us
people named Maritza are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 26,788 born in 2025 was named Maritza
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 Kourtney test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Maritza's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kourtney climbed just as high around 1990, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kourtney's path sketches the road Maritza is walking now.
Maritza 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
Where Maritza is headed
Maritza should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Maritza beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Maritza in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Belongs to the largest name family in the Western world while sounding nothing like the rest of it.
- Mari is a ready short form shared with a great many other names.
- Three syllables that read correctly in Spanish and are manageable in English.
- The tz is said as ts in Spanish and as z in English, so the name changes on crossing.
- Maritza, Maritsa and Marisa all circulate and get confused with one another.
- Its meaning is inherited and unsettled, so any gloss offered is really María's.
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What they receive
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Maritza
Feminine · #2822 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Maritzas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 22,500 people named Maritza are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Maritza in 2025?
- Maritza ranks #2822 among US girl names in 2025, with 60 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Maritza?
- About 1 in every 26,788 US girls born in 2025 was named Maritza — 60 in all.
- Will my child share the name Maritza with classmates?
- Maritza will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Maritza
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lya#2822 · Roxanna#2822 · Kensington#2822 · Maybelle#2822 · Hayat#2822 · Seven#2822 · Livie#2822 · Haniya#2822
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Maritza? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Maritza and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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