Humanverse

Arleen

Arleen reached its high-water mark in 1939 at number 303, and has been recorded 12,617 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 6,116th. About 7,500 Arleens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Arleen boys named Arleen

By the numbers

Total US births
12,617
Estimated living today
7,500
Median age today
65
Peak year
1939
Best rank
303rd
Rank in 2025
6,116th
First recorded
1898
Girls / boys
12,611 / 6

How old the living Arleens are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 12,617 babies given the name since 1898, about 7,500 are alive — 60 in every hundred. Roughly 850 of them are children and 3,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin a coined name

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Where Arleen is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Arleen is most concentrated in Hawaii (4.8×), Wisconsin (3.1×), New York (2.9×), New Jersey (2.2×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1939

The most popular girls’ names the year Arleen peaked:

All the names of 1939

Arleen elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Scotland girls Arleen 36 337th
England and Wales girls Arleen 18 3,985th
Ireland girls Arleen 3 542nd
Poland girls Arleen 2 birth registrations 721st

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Related names

Arleen against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Arleen with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.