Edith
- Pronunciation
- [E-dith]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- "Joyous."Some Variants Are Edit, Edita, Editha, Edyt, And Edyth.
- Origin
- Anglo
About the Name Edith
Edith descends from the Old English Eadgyth, composed of ead (wealth, prosperity) and gyth (war, strife) — yielding "prosperous in war" or "wealthy gift." The name has been used continuously in English-speaking countries since the medieval period, anchored by Saint Edith of Wilton (c. 961–984), the daughter of King Edgar of England.
Notable bearers include the iconic American novelist Edith Wharton (Edith Newbold Jones Wharton, 1862–1937, the iconic American author whose works including The Age of Innocence 1920 — for which she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921 — and The House of Mirth 1905 made her one of the foundational figures of late-19th and early-20th-century American literary fiction); American activist Edith Stein (1891–1942, the iconic German-Jewish-Catholic philosopher and Carmelite nun, canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross); American First Lady Edith Wilson (the wife of US President Woodrow Wilson); and the iconic Edith "Edie" Bunker of CBS's All in the Family (1971–1979).
Edith held a US top-25 girls' rank from 1880 through 1925 — about four decades of late-Victorian and early-20th-century American popularity. After a long mid-late 20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing again through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Eleanor and Adelaide. Edith climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its layered Old English-Anglo-Saxon-vintage pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built prosperous-warrior etymology, the strong Edith Wharton American literary cultural anchor, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival names. Common nicknames Edie (the dominant warm short form, casual and warm — also a popular standalone name on its own), Edi, Eda, Edy, and the rare Dith each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Edith and Edyth have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Edita (Italian/Spanish), Edith (essentially identical across English/Spanish), Édith (French, with accent), and the original Old English Eadgyth.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Edith
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Edith by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 7,858 girls named Edith (girl rank #30 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #499 for girls (595 US births). That's 469 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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Where in the US Is Edith 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 Edith the strongest states are North Dakota, Maine, District of Columbia.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | #150 | 29 |
| 2 | Maine | #176 | 26 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | #183 | 32 |
| 4 | New Hampshire | #194 | 19 |
| 5 | Minnesota | #235 | 221 |
| 6 | Idaho | #289 | 21 |
| 7 | Nebraska | #289 | 64 |
| 8 | Oregon | #315 | 111 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #360 | 143 |
| 10 | Iowa | #363 | 79 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #849 | 60 |
| 2 | Georgia | #702 | 134 |
| 3 | Arizona | #623 | 89 |
| 4 | Texas | #615 | 479 |
| 5 | California | #605 | 538 |
| 6 | New York | #593 | 265 |
| 7 | Tennessee | #542 | 129 |
| 8 | Maryland | #534 | 87 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #532 | 189 |
| 10 | Louisiana | #530 | 77 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Edith in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Edith
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Edith.
- Edith Piaf — Pop Singer (1915)
Looking for names like Edith?
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 Edith to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Edith 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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