Bertha
About 208,807 American babies have been named Bertha since 1880, most of them around 1918. In 2025 it ranked 4,546th. About 36,000 Berthas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 73.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Bertha boys named Bertha
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 208,807
- Estimated living today
- 36,000
- Median age today
- 73
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 51st
- Rank in 2025
- 4,546th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 207,870 / 937
How old the living Berthas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 208,807 babies given the name since 1880, about 36,000 are alive — 17 in every hundred. Roughly 590 of them are children and 25,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1952 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 Germanic languages
Definitely from Old English Berþa as a result of metathesis of h, from earlier Old English Berhte (“bright one”), influence of Latin Bercta.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Berthas
- Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914)Austrian novelist, radical (organizational) pacifist, editor
- Bertha Benz (1849–1944)German automobile pioneer, with husband Karl Benz
- Bertha of Holland (1055–1094)French Queen
- Bertha Lutz (1894–1976)Brazilian scientist
- Bertha of Kent (565–612)6th century queen consort of Kent
- Bertha of Savoy (1051–1088)Holy Roman Empress from 1084 to 1087
- Bertha of Burgundy (964–1010)Queen of the Franks from 996 to 1001
- Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936)Austrian feminist
People named Bertha with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bertha is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bertha is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.3×), Alabama (2.7×), South Carolina (2.6×), Arkansas (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Bertha peaked:
Bertha elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Bertha | 1,975 | 219th |
| Norway girls | Bertha | 41 | 291st |
| England and Wales girls | Bertha | 9 | 5,765th |
| Ireland girls | Bertha | 3 | 380th |
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.
Bertha among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Bertha | 5,744 | 10,213 |
| the Netherlands boys | Bertha | — | 309 |
| Finland girls | Bertha | 26 | 61 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Bertha lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 575 women called Bertha were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Navarra | Bertha | 14 | 0.041 | 1,477 |
| Madrid | Bertha | 144 | 0.039 | 1,339 |
| Barcelona | Bertha | 109 | 0.036 | 1,488 |
| Girona | Bertha | 15 | 0.036 | 1,587 |
| Ourense | Bertha | 5 | 0.032 | 1,330 |
| Tarragona | Bertha | 14 | 0.032 | 1,738 |
Listed in 28 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 24 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Bertha against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.