Marketta
Feminine · “A pearl”
Marketta is the Finnish form of Margaret, rebuilt around Finnish sounds — and Finnish, when it borrows a name, does not leave much of the original standing.
How old is the name Marketta?
Marketta first appears in US birth records in 1943 — 82 years ago. The typical Marketta alive today was born around 1981, making them about 44 years old. About 800 people named Marketta are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Marketta most popular?
Marketta peaked in 1985, reaching #2222 nationally. See the whole 1985 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Margarita to Marketta
The story of Marketta
Finnish has strict rules about what a word can look like, and borrowed names have to obey them: consonant clusters at the start are broken up or dropped, vowels are added to make syllables come out right, and the stress goes on the first syllable no matter what it was doing before. Margaret becomes Marketta or Maarit. Christina becomes Kirsti. Frederick becomes Reetu. The results look like native Finnish words because they have been made into native Finnish words, and a speaker of the source language often cannot recognize them at all. It is the opposite of English, which borrows names whole and then mispronounces them.
Meaning
A pearl
The name descends from Margaret, whose Greek original means a pearl and reached Greek from further east with the pearl trade. Finnish reshaped the word to fit its own rules, and the meaning traveled with it unchanged.
How the name formed
- Margarita
- Marketta
Related forms: Marketta · Maarit · Margareta
Pronouncing Marketta
mar-KET-uh
Three syllables. Finnish puts the stress on the first syllable, always; American speakers put it in the middle.
Nicknames for Marketta
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
- 1943
- Most girls named
- 198546 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2222reached in 1985
- Change vs 2004
- +20.0%6 in 2008, 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.
Marketta in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Marketta in Finnish — same name
- Maarit in Finnish — related form
- Margareta in Swedish — related form
Markettas among us
people named Marketta 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
Marketta 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
- The meaning is settled and the name behind it is one of the great European names.
- It is read correctly on sight by English speakers.
- It carries a real national form rather than an invented look.
- The English word market is sitting in the middle of it and people will see that first.
- Americans will stress the wrong syllable by Finnish standards.
- Margaretta and Marquetta are both nearby in the record.
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Marketta
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Markettas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Marketta are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Marketta in 2025?
- Marketta is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Marketta with classmates?
- Marketta 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 Marketta? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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