Rhett
- Pronunciation
- [Rhett]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- "Enthusiastic, Stream."
- Origin
- Welsh
About the Name Rhett
Rhett is a Welsh and English surname of disputed origin. The most credible trace runs through Welsh rhydd meaning "free" — making Rhett a name with an inherent register of independence. An alternative reading derives Rhett from a Dutch surname De Raadt, anglicized in 17th-century New England.
The name's overwhelming American cultural anchor is fictional: Rhett Butler, the dashing Confederate sympathizer and male lead of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the 1939 film of the same name (Clark Gable's iconic Oscar-nominated performance). Rhett Butler's relationship with Scarlett O'Hara — and his famous closing line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" — anchored the name in 20th-century American romantic-historical imagination.
The name was rare in American naming until the 1980s, when it began climbing slowly. The contemporary surge is part of the broader rural-Americana naming wave alongside Wyatt, Easton, and Colton. Rhett climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1980 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 200 since. Notable contemporary bearers include American podcaster Rhett McLaughlin (of the Rhett & Link YouTube channel and Good Mythical Morning), and various country singers and actors. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built Southern-American romantic register from the Gone with the Wind anchor, the compact one-syllable hard-consonant structure, and the distinctive H-spelling that signals slight sophistication. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Rh and the rare Rhetty each occasionally appear. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Rhett
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Rhett by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2021 with 2,538 boys named Rhett (boy rank #149 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #188 for boys (1,936 US births). That's 39 places below its 2021 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Rhett Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Rhett the strongest states are South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Dakota | #45 | 205 |
| 2 | North Dakota | #45 | 203 |
| 3 | Montana | #54 | 175 |
| 4 | Arkansas | #66 | 462 |
| 5 | Nebraska | #72 | 313 |
| 6 | Kansas | #74 | 445 |
| 7 | Wyoming | #74 | 66 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #78 | 527 |
| 9 | Iowa | #80 | 427 |
| 10 | Louisiana | #81 | 626 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #687 | 94 |
| 2 | Massachusetts | #493 | 82 |
| 3 | New York | #480 | 316 |
| 4 | Connecticut | #387 | 49 |
| 5 | California | #376 | 891 |
| 6 | New Mexico | #342 | 27 |
| 7 | Nevada | #309 | 103 |
| 8 | Maryland | #261 | 225 |
| 9 | Arizona | #224 | 355 |
| 10 | Florida | #221 | 878 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Rhett in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Rhett?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Rhett to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Rhett against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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