Mart
Masculine
Mart is a word before it is a name. A mart is a market, and the word is a Dutch import worn down to one syllable — it came into English with the Low Countries wool trade and stayed, which is why supermarkets and cattle sales still use it.
How old is the name Mart?
Mart was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Mart alive today was born around 1946, making them about 79 years old. About 500 people named Mart are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mart most popular?
Mart peaked in 1891, reaching #597 nationally. See the whole 1891 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Latin mercatus, trade, gives Dutch markt to Mart
The story of Mart
The word arrived with the cloth trade. English merchants dealing with Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent in the later Middle Ages picked up a good deal of Dutch commercial vocabulary — mart among it, along with dock, freight, skipper and a dozen other working words — and the borrowings survived because the trade did. The great fairs of the Low Countries were called marts, and English used the word for a periodic trading fair before it slid into meaning any place where things are sold. It is a small piece of evidence for where England's money came from for two hundred years.
Meaningnot established
Not established
As a given name it is most likely a short form of Martin, which comes from the god Mars, or of Martha, which is Aramaic for a lady or mistress of a household. As a word it is unrelated to either: mart is a contraction of market borrowed from Middle Dutch, and market itself comes from the Latin for trade. An American record from the 1880s carries no indication of which the family meant, and short names of that period were often exactly what a household said rather than anything chosen.
How the name formed
- Latin mercatus, trade, gives Dutch markt
- English borrows mart from the Low Countries wool trade
- Martin and Martha supply a separate route to the name
- Mart in American records from before 1880
- out of use by the middle of the last century
Related forms: Maarten · Mart · Martin
Pronouncing Mart
MART
One syllable, rhyming with cart. There is no other reading available in English.
Nicknames for Mart
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 boys named
- 195828 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #597reached in 1891
- Change vs 1988
- 0.0%5 in 2006, 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.
Mart in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Maarten in Dutch — related form
- Mart in Estonian — same name
- Martin in English — related form
Marts among us
people named Mart 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
Mart 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
- Four letters, one syllable and impossible to mispronounce.
- Martin stands behind it as a formal option and Marty in front as a warm one.
- It is a genuine Estonian name as well as an English shortening.
- It is an ordinary English word for a shop, which is hard to unhear.
- It reads as a shortening and people will look for a longer name.
- It belongs to the oldest layer of the American record and has had no revival.
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Mart
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Marts are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Mart are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mart in 2025?
- Mart is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Mart with classmates?
- Mart will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Michael#21 · Matthew#32 · Mark#244 · Mason#39 · Martin#335 · Marvin#699 · Melvin#958 · Marcus#258
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mart? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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