Garrett
- Pronunciation
- [Ga-rrett]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Strong Spear
- Origin
- Anglo
About the Name Garrett
Garrett descends from the Old Germanic Gerhard, composed of ger (spear) and hard (brave, hardy) — yielding "strong spear" or "brave with spear." The name entered English-speaking countries through Norman French following the 1066 conquest, where the Old Germanic Gerhard was anglicized as Gerard, Garrett, and Jarrett.
Notable bearers include Confederate Civil War general Garrett Augustus Hobart (1844–1899, the 24th US Vice President under McKinley); American journalist Garrett Morris (born 1937, the iconic African-American comedian and original cast member of NBC's Saturday Night Live 1975–1980); and the contemporary American novelist Garrett M. Graff.
Garrett held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1985 through 2010 — over two decades of consistent American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 boys' rank. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Old Germanic-Norman-English pedigree, the in-built warrior-spear historical register, and the popular two-syllable structure with the distinctive double-R rhythm. Two firm syllables, hard consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Germanic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Garry, Gary (a separate but related name), Garr, Rhett (back-end shortening), and the rare Gar each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Garret (single R), Jarrett, and Jarred have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Gerhard (German original), Gérard (French), Gerardo (Spanish/Italian), and the original Old Germanic Gerhard.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Garrett
US Popularity History (1990–2025)
Annual US births named Garrett by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 5,840 boys named Garrett (boy rank #74 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #564 for boys (526 US births). That's 490 places below its 2000 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 Garrett 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 Garrett the strongest states are Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delaware | #203 | 17 |
| 2 | New Hampshire | #204 | 38 |
| 3 | Maine | #205 | 33 |
| 4 | North Dakota | #211 | 19 |
| 5 | South Dakota | #216 | 39 |
| 6 | West Virginia | #221 | 94 |
| 7 | Montana | #232 | 33 |
| 8 | Ohio | #259 | 468 |
| 9 | Idaho | #275 | 70 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #275 | 420 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #620 | 460 |
| 2 | New York | #541 | 273 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #535 | 119 |
| 4 | Washington | #508 | 132 |
| 5 | Louisiana | #505 | 95 |
| 6 | Arizona | #495 | 132 |
| 7 | Texas | #491 | 611 |
| 8 | Florida | #482 | 328 |
| 9 | Utah | #448 | 98 |
| 10 | Nevada | #446 | 28 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Garrett in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gareth | Son Of Lot | Male | Arthurian |
| Garett | Variant Of Gerald Rules By The Spear. | Male | English |
| Garrard | Brave With A Spear | Male | English |
| Garret | Variant Of Gerald Rules By The Spear. | Male | English |
| Garreth | Gentle. Modest And Brave Sir Gareth Was A Legendary Knight Of King Arthur's Round Table. | Male | Arthurian |
| Gerrit | Spear Hard | Male | English |
| Jared | Descending | Male | Hebrew |
| Jarod | Descending | Male | Hebrew |
| Jarret | Spear Strong. Variant Of Garrett. | Male | English |
| Jarrett | Spear Strong. Surname. Variant Of Garrett. | Male | English |
Looking for names like Garrett?
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 Garrett to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Garrett against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).