Aretha

Where Aretha comes from

Aretha hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1900
    First appearance
    #1,932 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1942
    Aretha Franklin born
    American singer, songwriter, and pianist
  3. 1968
    Peak, #397
    543 babies named Aretha — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1970
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #639.
  5. 1976
    Aretha Thurmond born
    American discus thrower
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Aretha Franklin · American singer, songwriter, and pianist, 1942–2018
  • Aretha Thurmond · American discus thrower, born 1976
  • Aretha Brown · Indigenous Australian activist and artist, born 2000
  • Aretha Teckentrup · British mathematician and data scientist

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.