Bertha
- Pronunciation
- [Ber-tha]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Not recorded
- Origin
- French
Bertha is a name traditionally given to a girl of French origin. Our sources do not preserve a single agreed-upon literal translation for this particular name, so we list its meaning as unrecorded rather than guess at one. Browse more French baby names or search the full library by meaning.
About the Name Bertha
Bertha's origins lie in Old High German: the element beraht or berht, meaning "bright" or "shining" — the same root found in Albert, Robert, and Herbert. The "Legend Name" label sometimes attached to it reflects a cultural designation rather than a linguistic etymology, though the genuine Germanic root is well established. Bertha was borne by early medieval royalty, including a Frankish queen of the sixth century, and was common across Germanic-speaking Europe throughout the Middle Ages before passing into the English-speaking world through Norman and broader European influence.
The name appears in the SSA top-1000 from 1880 and reached its national peak of #7 in 1883, accumulating nearly 149,000 recorded top-1000 births across its 50-year chart run. That very early peak — in the third year of available SSA records — reflects Bertha's status as a firmly Victorian-era name at the height of the Anglo-Germanic naming fashion that dominated late-nineteenth-century America. The name last appeared in the SSA top-1000 in 1930, at rank #95.
Bertha is today a deeply vintage name, carrying a weight of early-twentieth-century associations that make it both historically interesting and culturally challenging for contemporary parents. It belongs to the cohort of Germanic brightness names — Bertha, Alberta, Roberta, Herbert — that dominated before World War I changed the cultural reception of Germanic names in the English-speaking world. Recorded variants include Berta, Bertie, Bird, Birdie, and Birdy.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Bertha
US Popularity History (1880–1930)
Annual US births named Bertha by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 5,051 girls named Bertha (girl rank #51 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1930, ranked #95 for girls (2,605 US births). That's 44 places below its 1918 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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Variant Forms
Looking for names like Bertha?
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Compare Bertha to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Bertha against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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