Aretha
given name · Latin script
Meaning: pers. name (A. Franklin)
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 25 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
Aretha is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 9K(measured from records)
- GHGhana≈1 in 20Kfew records
- JMJamaica≈1 in 24Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 294 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.0K (inferred from the name graph)
4,025 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)pers. name (A. Franklin)
Cited for this meaning 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Aretha counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 4,025 | 1 in 83K | 4K | Aretha | 294 |
| GH Ghana | #658 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Aretha | 17 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Aretha | 26 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 61K | listed | Aretha | 90 |
| BR Brazil | — | 901 | 1 in 235K | 901 | — | 4 |
| JM Jamaica | #658 | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Aretha | 8 |
| GY Guyana | #364 | 83 | 1 in 9K | 83 | Aretha | 7 |
| GD Grenada | — | ≈4 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 3 | — | 1 |
4,025 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the gb-nisra-baby-names-ni register; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Aretha Franklinb. 1942USAmerican singer, songwriter, and pianist (1942–2018)
- Aretha Marcosb. 1974BRBrazilian singer and actress
- Aretha Thurmondb. 1976USAmerican discus thrower
- Aretha Aokib. 1979CAJapanese-Canadian artist
- Aretha Henryb. 1982USAmerican singer-songwriter
- Aretha Brownb. 2000AUIndigenous Australian activist and artist
- Aretha TeckentrupGBBritish mathematician and data scientist
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)42 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4K | #4,572 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 901 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 898 | #8,880 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2020 | 841 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2010 | 756 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 637 | #12,293 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2000 | 636 | — |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 632 | #6,295 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1968 | 543 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1990 | 448 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1980 | 406 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1967 | 385 | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Aretha mean, and where does it come from?
- pers. name (A. Franklin) Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- Is Aretha a male or female name?
- Aretha is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Brazil (IBGE, 2022).
- In which country does Aretha have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.0 thousand people named Aretha, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled aretha.
- Where is Aretha most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Aretha is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 9.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Aretha?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,025 people named Aretha in 2020, about 1 in 83 thousand residents.
- How common is Aretha compared with other names?
- In Guyana, Aretha is the 364th most common given name of 15,440 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Aretha?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/arethaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Aretha” — the 364th most common given name in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.