Marla
About 38,819 American babies have been named Marla since 1912, most of them around 1955. In 2025 it ranked 2,051st. About 33,000 Marlas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 60.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Marla boys named Marla
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 38,819
- Estimated living today
- 33,000
- Median age today
- 60
- Peak year
- 1955
- Best rank
- 193rd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,051st
- First recorded
- 1912
- Girls / boys
- 38,781 / 38
How old the living Marlas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 38,819 babies given the name since 1912, about 33,000 are alive — 85 in every hundred. Roughly 1,300 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1965 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 Hebrew
American, first used in the 1930s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Marlas
- Marla Maples (born 1963)American actress and TV personality
- Marla Gibbs (born 1931)actress, entertainer, singer, writer, and producer
- Marla Sokoloff (born 1980)American actress
- Marla Adams (1938–2024)American actress
- Marla English (1935–2012)American film actress
People named Marla with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Marla is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Marla is most concentrated in Kansas (2.4×), Iowa (2.1×), Idaho (2.1×), Indiana (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1955
The most popular girls’ names the year Marla peaked:
Marla elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Marla | 666 | 516th |
| France girls | Marla | 410 | 1,306th |
| Switzerland girls | Marla | 391 | 302nd |
| Scotland girls | Marla | 42 | 342nd |
| Belgium girls | Marla | 7 | 1,023rd |
| Ireland girls | Marla | 3 | 898th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Marla | 3 | 397th |
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.
Marla: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Marla | 368 | 0.030% | 225th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Marla | 22 | 0.005% | 398th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Marla | 1 | 0.002% | 196th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Marla is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.07% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Marla by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 188 | 108th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Marla 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 | Marla | 55 | 67 |
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
Marla 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.