Margarita

93,539 people in America carry this name — ranked #570 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it mahr gur EE tuh

4 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M AA2 R G ER0 IY1 T AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 93,539 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 31.0 about 1 in 3,543 people
  • As a surname 243 ranked #83,373 the other way round

Where Margarita comes from and what it means

Greek in origin, reading literally as “pearl”.

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.

Margarita name popularity by year

39,866 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1957, with 598 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. 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 Margarita

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Margarita Mary — same opening
  • Margarita Michelle — same opening
  • Margarita Ashley — 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.

Going quiet

Margarita has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Margarita used for boys or for girls?

0.3% men
93,287 women

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

The states where Margarita is most common

In Texas the name is given 2.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Texas ×2.8
  • California ×2.8
  • Arizona ×2.3
  • New Mexico ×2.1
  • New York ×1.6

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.

Names built the same way as Margarita

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 4 syllables, stress on the third

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

How Margarita is spelled

Margarita is how 14% of them spell it — 670,681 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

The same name abroad

  • Meg English
  • May Scottish
  • Mai Esth
  • Mag English
  • Rita Italian
  • Reta Finn
  • Mete German
  • Kret Esth
  • Grel Bav
  • Gogo French
  • Peggy English
  • Mysic Scottish
  • Moggy English
  • Mette Danish

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.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 0.6%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 90.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.0%

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.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator 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 Greek origin