Scarlett · Daily fortune

Scarlett is a feminine name of English origin. Behind the Name derives it from an English surname that denoted a person who sold or made clothes of scarlet — a kind of cloth, possibly from Persian سقرلاط (saqrelāṭ) — so the name points at a trade and a fabric before it points at a colour. Margaret Mitchell gave it to Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1936), explaining in the novel that the character took it from her grandmother. Despite the popular 1939 film, the name stayed uncommon until the 21st century. It ranked #32 among American girls' names in 2025.

Behind the Name derives Scarlett "from an English surname that denoted a person who sold or made clothes made of scarlet (a kind of cloth, possibly derived from Persian سقرلاط (saqrelāṭ))". Wikipedia's article on the given name agrees, describing it as an occupational surname for people who sold scarlet, a luxury wool cloth of medieval Europe, and connecting the word to the bright red colour. The two accounts differ only in emphasis: Behind the Name treats scarlet primarily as a cloth and marks the Persian derivation as possible rather than settled, while Wikipedia leads with the colour association. Neither source gives the name an independent meaning of its own — it inherits whatever scarlet meant to the medieval cloth trade.

Scarlett began as an English occupational surname. Its life as a given name starts with fiction: Margaret Mitchell used it for the heroine of Gone with the Wind in 1936, and the novel explains that the character got it from her grandmother. Behind the Name is explicit that the enormously popular 1939 film adaptation did not make the name common — that took another six decades. Its rise began around 2003, roughly when the career of the American actress Scarlett Johansson (born 1984) took off. Wikipedia records the result across the English-speaking world: a top-20 American girls' name since 2021, 14th in 2022, and a steady presence in the top 100 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Scarlett ranked #32 for girls in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration). That sits slightly below the peak Wikipedia describes — top 20 since 2021 and 14th in 2022 — so the 2025 file reads as a name easing back from a high rather than one still climbing. Wikipedia also reports consistent top-100 placings in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom; those national files were not fetched directly for this profile.

Scarlett is an English name and Behind the Name lists no "Other Languages & Cultures" forms for it — only the English spelling variants Scarlet and Scarlette. Behind the Name gives no IPA for the entry, so the respelling below is the conventional English reading of the word scarlet and has not been verified against a phonetic source.

Scarlett is the rare colour name that does not read as a nature name. It carries a specific literary heroine, a specific shade of red and a double-t ending that lines it up with Charlotte, Violet and Juliet rather than with Ruby or Hazel. The effect is vintage-glamorous: Southern-Gothic on the page, red-carpet in the present. It is also unusually nickname-resistant — Behind the Name lists no diminutives at all — so parents who want a short form tend to invent one rather than inherit one.

The bearers below are limited to those named in the two sources consulted for this profile: the Behind the Name entry and the Wikipedia article on the given name.

Names that share Scarlett's sound, its vintage-literary register, or its colour-and-jewel logic.