Meaning and history
Merle comes from the English word merle or the French surname Merle, both meaning “blackbird” and ultimately derived from Latin merula. It appears as the surname of the devious Madame Merle in Henry James’s 1880 novel The Portrait of a Lady, and it is also used as a girls’ name in Estonia, though its connection to the English-language name is uncertain.
20062006: 26 births, rank #3,782
2007: 17 births, rank #5,210
2008: 19 births, rank #4,901
2009: 22 births, rank #4,429
2010: 22 births, rank #4,366
20112011: 18 births, rank #4,983
2012: 9 births, rank #8,158
2013: 16 births, rank #5,404
2014: 15 births, rank #5,733
2015: 21 births, rank #4,545
20162016: 14 births, rank #6,053
2017: 20 births, rank #4,746
2018: 23 births, rank #4,354
2019: 22 births, rank #4,480
2020: 33 births, rank #3,344
20212021: 22 births, rank #4,494
2022: 27 births, rank #3,995
2023: 40 births, rank #3,055
2024: 22 births, rank #4,571
20252025: 33 births, rank #3,450
Merle moved from #960 to #1000 for boys between 1977 and 1979. Its highest annual birth count came in 1925, with 836 births.