Humanverse

Marcella

About 65,836 American babies have been named Marcella since 1880, most of them around 1922. In 2025 it ranked 948th. About 30,000 Marcellas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 58.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Marcella boys named Marcella

By the numbers

Total US births
65,836
Estimated living today
30,000
Median age today
58
Peak year
1922
Best rank
155th
Rank in 2025
948th
First recorded
1880
Girls / boys
65,614 / 222

How old the living Marcellas are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 65,836 babies given the name since 1880, about 30,000 are alive — 46 in every hundred. Roughly 3,700 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 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 Latin

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

Notable Marcellas

People named Marcella with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Marcella is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Marcella is most concentrated in New Mexico (3.4×), North Dakota (3.3×), South Dakota (3.2×), Minnesota (2.8×).

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

Names of 1922

The most popular girls’ names the year Marcella peaked:

All the names of 1922

Marcella elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Italy girls Marcella 1,037
Ireland girls Marcella 678 150th
France girls Marcella 655 442nd
England and Wales girls Marcella 381 1,259th
Scotland girls Marcella 37 560th
Poland girls Marcella 5 birth registrations 594th

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.

Marcella 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 Marcella 2,262 4,741
Finland girls Marcella 16 54
the Netherlands boys Marcella 28

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 Marcella lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 267 women called Marcella 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
Tarragona Marcella 15 0.034 1,675
Santa Cruz de Tenerife Marcella 19 0.034 2,054
Balears, Illes Marcella 19 0.030 1,847
Barcelona Marcella 84 0.028 1,775
Palmas, Las Marcella 14 0.024 2,929
Castellón/Castelló Marcella 6 0.019 2,356

Listed in 10 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 42 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

Marcella against another name

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

Compare Marcella 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.