Greta
Meaning
pearl (German short form of Margarete)
The story
Greta is the short form Margareta wears in half of Europe, and the pearl underneath is real: Behind the Name traces Margaret to Greek margarites, pearl, a word probably borrowed from farther east before Greek ever had it. Its famous bearer, by the source's own telling, is Greta Garbo. The American record shows a name with three separate lives: 2,879 girls in the 1930s, 3,462 in the 1960s, and a third climb to 4,712 across the 2010s, with 1,918 so far this decade. The third climb is the biggest of the three. Abroad it is having a real moment: 14th in Italy in 2024 by Behind the Name's count, 35th in Hungary in 2025, against 908th in the United States. Greta has been on the American record in every decade since the 1890s, and on this site it already sits in Margaret's family tree, the short form with old-Hollywood polish.
The formal names behind Greta
Greta is an established short form of this name.
Margaret · Greek origin · pearl
Greta around the world
One shared root links 17 names across 7 languages.
Shared root: from Greek margarites "pearl", by way of Latin Margarita
The constellation
13 more branches of this family
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Greta peaked in the 2000s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
367 people · the #16,547 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 500,000 · median age 30
Among people named Greta living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 36 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Greta deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Greta truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Greta fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Names like Greta · Middle names for Greta · German baby names
Does Greta fit YOUR family?
nametree reads your family’s names and finds the ones that belong. Free, private, no ads.
Add Greta to your family’s tree →