Melba
The girl's name Melba has been in the national records since 1893, with 34,925 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 11,932nd. About 11,000 Melbas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 75.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Melba boys named Melba
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 34,925
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 75
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 202nd
- Rank in 2025
- 11,932nd
- First recorded
- 1893
- Girls / boys
- 34,873 / 52
How old the living Melbas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 34,925 babies given the name since 1893, about 11,000 are alive — 31 in every hundred. Roughly 70 of them are children and 8,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1950 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 English
Coined by Nellie Melba as a pseudonym; derived from Melbourne.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Melbas
- Melba Moore (born 1945)American singer, and actress
- Melba Liston (1926–1999)American jazz trombonist, musical arranger, and composer
- Melba Phillips (1907–2004)American physicist and science educator
- Melba Montgomery (1938–2025)American musician
- Melba Hernández (1921–2014)Cuban politician
People named Melba with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Melba is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Melba is most concentrated in Arkansas (5.5×), Oklahoma (4.1×), Louisiana (3.2×), Alabama (3.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular girls’ names the year Melba peaked:
Where Melba lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 225 women called Melba 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guadalajara | Melba | 5 | 0.036 | 1,402 |
| Cantabria | Melba | 10 | 0.033 | 1,355 |
| Lugo | Melba | 5 | 0.030 | 1,435 |
| León | Melba | 5 | 0.022 | 1,822 |
| Tarragona | Melba | 8 | 0.018 | 2,438 |
| Palmas, Las | Melba | 10 | 0.017 | 3,759 |
Listed in 16 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 36 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
Melba 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.