Gretchen
Gretchen reached its high-water mark in 1973 at number 191, and has been recorded 53,837 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 4,265th. About 42,000 Gretchens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gretchen boys named Gretchen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 53,837
- Estimated living today
- 42,000
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1973
- Best rank
- 191st
- Rank in 2025
- 4,265th
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 53,799 / 38
How old the living Gretchens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 53,837 babies given the name since 1882, about 42,000 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 2,500 of them are children and 9,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin German
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gretchens
- Gretchen Whitmer (born 1971)American politician and attorney
- Gretchen Mol (born 1972)American actress and former model
- Gretchen Carlson (born 1966)American broadcast journalist, author, television personality and female empowerment advocate
- Gretchen Walsh (born 2003)American swimmer
- Gretchen Fraser (1919–1994)American alpine skier
- Gretchen C. Daily (born 1964)American biologist
- Gretchen Wilson (born 1973)American country singer
- Gretchen Bleiler (born 1981)American snowboarder
People named Gretchen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gretchen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gretchen is most concentrated in Minnesota (3.0×), Iowa (2.1×), Wisconsin (2.0×), Oregon (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1973
The most popular girls’ names the year Gretchen peaked:
Gretchen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Gretchen | 30 | 2,862nd |
| Ireland girls | Gretchen | 3 | 533rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Gretchen among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Gretchen | 6 | 11 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Gretchen against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.