One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Girls' name · 39,146 recorded births

Marla

#2,051 in the US in 2025

Where Marla stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#2,051girls’ names · US 2025

Marla was the 2,051st most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 92 births.

peak 1955 · 1,725188019532025

Its moment was 1955, when 1,725 babies were given it. In 8 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

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

#2,051US rank, 2025 (girls)
92US births in 2025
#193its best US rank, in 1955
1955peak year — 1,725 births
38,781US births since 1912
365E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Marla's figures are worked out

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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. Marla was under the floor in 8 years 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

Full methodology →

Marla in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.04488
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Marla in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 47% 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

Marla in New Zealand

Marla never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.

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

Marla in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Marla was registered 365 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2024 with 76 births. It ranked #792 for girls in 2025 on 46 births. Across those years it has been rising.

20200.01529
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Marla in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

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

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1920#4,9755
1930#2,69011
1940#575147
1950#298681
1960#2721,087
1970#2731,090
1980#496417
1990#802250
2000#1,558114
2010#2,25885
2020#2,52368

<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 Marla most often since 1912. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California4,408
Illinois2,986
Texas2,782
Ohio2,303
New York1,884
Pennsylvania1,664
Indiana1,652
Michigan1,424
Missouri1,231
Iowa1,008

Questions about Marla

How popular is the name Marla?

Marla ranked #2,051 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 92 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Marla most popular?

Marla peaked in 1955, when 1,725 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Marla rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Marla has been rising between 2016 and 2025 (+47%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1955, 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

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.