Rita
About 285,230 American babies have been named Rita since 1880, most of them around 1949. In 2025 it ranked 1,285th. About 141,000 Ritas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 69.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rita boys named Rita
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 285,230
- Estimated living today
- 141,000
- Median age today
- 69
- Peak year
- 1949
- Best rank
- 54th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,285th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 284,452 / 778
How old the living Ritas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 285,230 babies given the name since 1880, about 141,000 are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 3,200 of them are children and 92,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1956 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 Romance languages, Italian, Spanish
From roa Rita (Italian Rita, Spanish Rita). A shortening of Italian Margherita, and Spanish Margarita, cognates of English Margaret. An Italian Saint Rita was canonized in 1900. The English name came into regular use in early twentieth century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ritas
- Rita Hayworth (1918–1987)American actress
- Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012)Italian neurologist
- Rita Ora (born 1990)English-Albanian singer and actress
- Rita Moreno (born 1931)Puerto Rican actress
- Rita Wilson (born 1956)American actress, singer and producer
- Rita Lee (1947–2023)Brazilian singer, songwriter, author, actress and television host
- Rita Mae Brown (born 1944)novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist
- Rita Pavone (born 1945)Italian actress and singer
People named Rita with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rita is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rita is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.9×), Massachusetts (2.5×), New Hampshire (2.5×), Maine (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1949
The most popular girls’ names the year Rita peaked:
Rita elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italy girls | Rita | 9,163 | — |
| France girls | Rita | 8,815 | 277th |
| Norway girls | Rita | 6,801 | 25th |
| Poland girls | Rita | 3,344 birth registrations | 86th |
| Ireland girls | Rita | 1,299 | 59th |
| England and Wales girls | Rita | 1,072 | 573rd |
| Switzerland girls | Rita | 439 | 236th |
| Belgium girls | Rita | 309 | 522nd |
| Scotland girls | Rita | 71 | 431st |
| Northern Ireland girls | Rita | 16 | 264th |
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.
Rita: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Rita | 238 | 0.019% | 296th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Rita | 180 | 0.041% | 120th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Rita | 19 | 0.029% | 90th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Rita | 2 | 0.054% | 10th |
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, Rita is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.05% of children were given it – 53 of them.
Rita: rank by region
In 2025, Rita was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels | Rita | 244 | 5 |
In 2015, Rita was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Rita | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Rita was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Rita | 108 | 12 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Rita | 112 | 5 |
| Lubelskie | Rita | 98 | 7 |
| Lubuskie | Rita | 93 | 5 |
| Łódzkie | Rita | 98 | 10 |
| Małopolskie | Rita | 56 | 61 |
| Mazowieckie | Rita | 79 | 43 |
| Opolskie | Rita | 95 | 3 |
| Podkarpackie | Rita | 53 | 27 |
| Podlaskie | Rita | 82 | 6 |
| Pomorskie | Rita | 75 | 24 |
| Śląskie | Rita | 96 | 18 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Rita | 96 | 3 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Rita | 131 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Rita | 102 | 16 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Rita | 131 | 4 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Rita appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (244th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Rita by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 47 | 221st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Rita 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Rita | 1,918 | 3,639 |
| Finland girls | Rita | 1,779 | 2,064 |
| the Netherlands boys | Rita | — | 181 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Rita lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 10,024 women called Rita were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ourense | Rita | 172 | 1.084 | 162 |
| Palmas, Las | Rita | 627 | 1.063 | 131 |
| Pontevedra | Rita | 472 | 0.962 | 174 |
| Girona | Rita | 326 | 0.787 | 192 |
| Barcelona | Rita | 2,008 | 0.660 | 218 |
| Coruña, A | Rita | 368 | 0.623 | 229 |
Listed in 50 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 2 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Rita 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.