Della
- Pronunciation
- [De-lla]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Bright. Noble.
- Origin
- German
About the Name Della
Della is a name rooted in the Germanic element adal, meaning "bright" or "noble" — a linguistic thread woven through a wide family of English and European names including Adelaide, Adele, and Adeline. Della functions both as a standalone name and as a shortened, lyrical form of names in the adal family, giving it a heritage that is compact in sound but deep in etymology. Its soft two-syllable shape and its warm, open vowel ending have contributed to its enduring appeal across more than a century of American naming.
Della first appeared in the US Social Security top-1000 in 1880 — the very first year of recorded data — and peaked the following year in 1881 at its best rank of #60, confirming that it was already a well-established American name before national tracking began. It then went through a long middle period outside the top-1000, only to return in recent decades on the wave of vintage-name revival. By 2024 it ranked #580 with 518 births, its strongest recent showing, after sitting at #645 in 2023 and #658 in 2022. The name has accumulated 16,722 top-1000 births across its tracked history.
Della's modern revival fits squarely within the broader current preference for short, graceful, old-fashioned names that feel both fresh and familiar. It sits comfortably alongside names like Ella, Stella, and Nora in today's nursery. The sole recorded variant is Dell, a simpler form that shares the name's clean consonant-and-vowel structure.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Della
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Della by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1900 with 748 girls named Della (girl rank #90 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #563 for girls (533 US births). That's 473 places below its 1900 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 Della Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Della the strongest states are Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nebraska | #211 | 34 |
| 2 | Idaho | #275 | 33 |
| 3 | West Virginia | #299 | 18 |
| 4 | Utah | #351 | 87 |
| 5 | Mississippi | #398 | 56 |
| 6 | Kansas | #438 | 39 |
| 7 | Iowa | #444 | 63 |
| 8 | Arkansas | #452 | 43 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #456 | 125 |
| 10 | Missouri | #480 | 118 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Della in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dell | Noble. | Female | German |
Looking for names like Della?
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 Della to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Della 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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