Aretta

History & Origin

Aretta is a genuine early-twentieth-century American name of uncertain origin. It reads most plausibly as a diminutive of Aretha, from the Greek arete ('virtue, excellence'), or of the Italian Arietta, 'little air' — a short, sweet melody. Both suit its gentle -etta shape; we present them together rather than force a single root.

It was always rare — a few dozen girls a year at its faint peak in the early nineteen-twenties — and it faded across the century into disuse. It reads as a soft, old-fashioned -etta name; with its origin uncertain, it has stayed obscure, though its kin Aretha remains familiar through the singer Aretha Franklin.