How popular is the baby name Rita in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Rita.

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Popularity of the baby name Rita


Posts that mention the name Rita

Popular baby names in Croatia, 2024

Flag of Croatia
Flag of Croatia

Last year, the European country of Croatia welcomed 32,628 babies — 15,733 girls and 16,895 boys.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Mia and Luka, as usual.

Here are Croatia’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2024:

Girl names

  1. Mia, 377 baby girls
  2. Rita, 363
  3. Nika, 328
  4. Mila, 296
  5. Lucija, 292
  6. Ema, 290
  7. Marta, 286 (tie)
  8. Sara, 286 (tie)
  9. Eva, 219
  10. Dora, 212
  11. Lara, 210
  12. Iva, 207
  13. Elena, 201
  14. Ana, 195
  15. Klara, 191
  16. Laura, 181
  17. Petra, 180
  18. Marija, 174
  19. Tena, 161
  20. Vita, 158
  21. Lana, 153
  22. Hana, 152
  23. Lea, 148 (tie)
  24. Una, 148 (tie)
  25. Sofia, 147
  26. Franka, 143
  27. Cvita, 139 (tie)
  28. Ena, 139 (tie)
  29. Nora, 136
  30. Maša, 130
  31. Nikol, 126
  32. Leona, 125
  33. Lena, 123
  34. Maris, 116
  35. Magdalena, 113
  36. Iris, 108 (tie)
  37. Tia, 108 (tie)
  38. Lota, 106
  39. Tara, 105
  40. Karla, 104
  41. Emili, 102
  42. Roza, 101
  43. Mara, 100
  44. Aria, 99 (tie)
  45. Sofija, 99 (tie)
  46. Bruna, 95
  47. Aurora, 93
  48. Katja, 92
  49. Kiara, 91 (tie)
  50. Tea, 91 (tie)

Boy names

  1. Luka, 603 baby boys
  2. Jakov, 468
  3. Toma, 426
  4. David, 420
  5. Petar, 376
  6. Niko, 365
  7. Ivan, 359
  8. Mateo, 350
  9. Roko, 349
  10. Matej, 337
  11. Noa, 300
  12. Josip, 298
  13. Fran, 290
  14. Šimun, 274
  15. Teo, 273
  16. Lovro, 262
  17. Vito, 261
  18. Mihael, 240
  19. Borna, 236
  20. Karlo, 235
  21. Marko, 231
  22. Leon, 225
  23. Filip, 223
  24. Jan, 220
  25. Leo, 211
  26. Ante, 206
  27. Gabriel, 185
  28. Ivano, 181
  29. Viktor, 153
  30. Lukas, 151
  31. Bruno, 147 (tie)
  32. Oliver, 147 (tie)
  33. Adrian, 143 (tie)
  34. Noel, 143 (tie)
  35. Rafael, 140
  36. Tin, 126
  37. Dominik, 125 (3-way tie)
  38. Emanuel, 125 (3-way tie)
  39. Liam, 125 (3-way tie)
  40. Marin, 121
  41. Mauro, 117
  42. Nikola, 116
  43. Maro, 114
  44. Toni, 100
  45. Duje, 96
  46. Antonio, 81 (4-way tie)
  47. Franko, 81 (4-way tie)
  48. Jona, 81 (4-way tie)
  49. Lovre, 81 (4-way tie)
  50. Patrik, 78

In the girls’ top 50, Maris, Aria, and Kiara replaced Marla, Luce, and Lora.

In the boys’ top 50, Franko and Jona replaced Erik and Andrej.

I didn’t post about Croatia’s top baby names of 2023, but here are Croatia’s 2022 rankings.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Civil ensign of Croatia (public domain)

Female names in six generations of the same family

Roxanne Steele (100) and her great-great-great-granddaughter Trina Byerly (10 months)
Roxanne with great-great-great-granddaughter Trina

In mid-1972, Life magazine ran a photo of six females — mothers and daughters spanning six generations within a single family. The oldest was 100; the youngest was not yet one.

All six live within a one-hundred mile radius of the 90-acre farm in the flatlands of southern Alabama where Mrs. [Roxanne] Steele, now the matriarch of a clan so vast that no one has counted it, was born.

Here are the birth names of the six females (five women and one baby):

  1. Roxanne Kennedy (b. 1871), who, with David Steele, had a daughter named…
  2. Stella Steele (b. 1898), who, with John Godwin, had a daughter named…
  3. Geneva Godwin (b. 1918), who, with Rayburn Moye, had a daughter named…
  4. Rita Moye (b. 1935), who, with Ples Booth, had a daughter named…
  5. Shirley Ann Booth (b. 1953), who, with William Byerly, had a daughter named…
  6. Trina Roxanne Byerly (b. 1970)

Which of their names — Roxanne, Stella, Geneva, Rita, Shirley, or Trina — do you like best? Why?

Sources:

Image: Clipping from Life magazine (21 Jul. 1972)

What gave the baby name Gilda a boost in the mid-1940s?

The title character from the movie "Gilda" (1946)
Gilda from “Gilda“

The baby name Gilda achieved its highest ranking in 1927, thanks to shimmying Gilda Gray. But it didn’t reach peak numerical usage until two decades later:

  • 1948: 281 baby girls named Gilda [rank: 479th]
  • 1947: 346 baby girls named Gilda [rank: 441st]
  • 1946: 305 baby girls named Gilda [rank: 442nd]
  • 1945: 68 baby girls named Gilda [rank: 920th]
  • 1944: 61 baby girls named Gilda [rank: 994th]

Why did the usage of Gilda more than quadruple in 1946 (which, admittedly, was the first year of the baby boom)?

Because of the hit movie Gilda, which was released in April of that year.

The movie was a “dark and twisted love story” set in Buenos Aires. It involved gambler Johnny Farrell (played by Glenn Ford), who worked for casino owner Ballin Mundson (played by George Macready), whose new wife just so happened to be Johnny’s ex-lover Gilda (played by Rita Hayworth).

A classic of film noir, Gilda featured Hayworth as the quintessential “noir woman,” a duplicitous temptress and an abused victim in equal measure.

Hayworth’s portrayal of the the seductive Gilda turned the actress “into one of the cinema’s most unforgettable and enduring sex goddesses.”

Several months after the release of Gilda, the world’s fourth atomic bomb detonation (the first during peacetime) occurred above Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Servicemen had nicknamed the bomb Gilda — a nod to Hayworth’s status as a bombshell — and stenciled “Gilda” on the side of the explosive. They even affixed an image of Rita Hayworth (cut out of Esquire magazine) below the stenciled name.

This spontaneous tribute earned Miss Hayworth nearly as much international publicity as the fearsome “Gilda” got for itself by exploding on schedule. To Miss Hayworth’s studio it amounted to the most literally earth-shaking free plug in the history of the world.

Which name do you like more, Gilda or Rita?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of Gilda

What revived the baby name Rita in the early 1940s?

Actress Rita Hayworth in the movie "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939)
Rita Hayworth in “Only Angels Have Wings“

The baby name Rita became a top-100 girl name in the U.S. in the mid-1910s.

Rita remained popular during the 1920s, but usage declined in the 1930s. The name probably would have slipped out of the top 100 if usage hadn’t started increasing again in 1940:

  • 1942: 4,706 baby girls named Rita [rank: 55th]
  • 1941: 3,879 baby girls named Rita [rank: 63rd]
  • 1940: 3,442 baby girls named Rita [rank: 70th]
  • 1939: 3,188 baby girls named Rita [rank: 78th]
  • 1938: 3,357 baby girls named Rita [rank: 74th]

Here’s a visual:

Graph of the usage of the baby name Rita in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Rita

What revived expectant parents’ interest in the baby name Rita around 1940?

My guess is glamorous film star Rita Hayworth.

Hayworth, whose birth name was Margarita Carmen Cansino, was born into a family of dancers (the “Dancing Cansinos”) and performed professionally as a child.

She began acting in films in the mid-1930s, and found fame upon the success of Only Angels Have Wings (1939) — the first movie in which she played a prominent role (“as an unfaithful wife who tries to seduce Cary Grant”).

She went on to portray femmes fatale in melodramas like The Lady in Question (1940), Blood and Sand (1941), and The Strawberry Blonde (1941), and she exhibited her dancing skills in musicals like You’ll Never Get Rich (1941), You Were Never Lovelier (1942), and Cover Girl (1944).

Rita Hayworth in Life magazine (Aug. 1941)
Rita Hayworth in Life magazine

In August of 1941 — four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor — Life magazine published a photo of Hayworth wearing a “black-and-white nightgown,” kneeling “on her own bed in her own home.” That photo went on to become one of the most popular pin-up images of World War II.

How do you feel about the name Rita? Would you use it as-is, or do you prefer it as a nickname for Margarita?

P.S. The name Rita reached its highest-ever ranking (42nd) in 1930, no doubt thanks to the musical comedy Rio Rita (1929), which starred actress Bebe Daniels.

Sources:

Images: Screenshot of Only Angels Have Wings; clipping from Life magazine (11 Aug. 1941)