Gretchen
#4,265 in the US in 2025
Where Gretchen stands
#4,265girls’ names · US 2025
Gretchen was the 4,265th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 33 births.
Its moment was 1973, when 1,351 babies were given it.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How Gretchen's figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
- A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Gretchen was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000 reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
Gretchen in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 79% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Gretchen in New Zealand
In New Zealand, Gretchen has been registered 130 times since 1966, peaking in 1974 with 19 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Gretchen in England & Wales
Gretchen does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | #483 | 29 |
| 1900 | #453 | 55 |
| 1910 | #403 | 95 |
| 1920 | #625 | 131 |
| 1930 | #500 | 178 |
| 1940 | #289 | 471 |
| 1950 | #329 | 545 |
| 1960 | #306 | 937 |
| 1970 | #251 | 1,244 |
| 1980 | #271 | 917 |
| 1990 | #628 | 356 |
| 2000 | #743 | 310 |
| 2010 | #1,101 | 226 |
| 2020 | #2,597 | 65 |
<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.
Where in the United States
The states that registered Gretchen most often since 1882. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | 4,227 |
| Ohio | 3,986 |
| California | 3,746 |
| New York | 3,552 |
| Illinois | 2,784 |
| Minnesota | 2,680 |
| Michigan | 2,607 |
| Indiana | 1,975 |
| Wisconsin | 1,935 |
| Texas | 1,825 |
Questions about Gretchen
How popular is the name Gretchen?
Gretchen ranked #4,265 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 33 births registered with the Social Security Administration.
When was Gretchen most popular?
Gretchen peaked in 1973, when 1,351 babies in the United States were given the name.
Is Gretchen rising or falling?
Measured as a share of all girls' births, Gretchen has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-79%).
Names that had their moment when Gretchen did
Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1973, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026
