Bertha

64,455 people in America carry this name — ranked #772 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it BUR thuh

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

B ER1 TH AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 64,455 2020 Census
  • Rank #772 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 21.3 about 1 in 5,142 people
  • As a surname 499 ranked #46,089 the other way round

Where Bertha comes from and what it means

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “bright (Epiphany night)”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Bertha through the years

208,642 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1918, with 5,065 of them.

80 90 00 10s 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1910s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Bertha

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Bertha Barbara — same opening
  • Bertha Ashley — runs together
  • Bertha Amanda — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Bertha was 1918. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

Is Bertha used for boys or for girls?

0.2% men
64,319 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Same syllables and stress as Bertha

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 21.4%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 19.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 56.7%
  • Two or more races — 1.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 0.6%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Where in America Bertha is thickest on the ground

In Mississippi the name is given 3.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×3.6
  • New Mexico ×2.9
  • Alaska ×2.9
  • Texas ×2.8
  • California ×2.2

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

This name in other languages

  • Berta It.|Pol
  • Berthe French

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it How Rare Is It?

Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.

Familiar

  • People counted64,455
  • Rank#772
  • Roughly1 in 5,142 people

Open the full entry

Open How Rare Is It? on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin