From Germanic beraht meaning 'bright' or 'famous'; borne by Charlemagne's mother.
Bertha descends from the Old High German *Beraht*, meaning bright, famous, or shining — a name that once carried considerable prestige across medieval Europe. It appears in its various forms — Berta, Berthe, Berhta — throughout early medieval records, borne by queens and saints who shaped the Christianization of northern Europe. Most notably, Bertha of Kent was a Frankish princess who married King Æthelberht of Kent in the late sixth century, and her quiet influence was instrumental in creating the conditions that allowed Saint Augustine to successfully convert the English — a fact that earned her the title of saint in some traditions.
Bertha of Swabia was a Holy Roman Empress. The name ran through royal genealogies like a bright thread. The nineteenth century was Bertha's peak in popular usage, particularly in Britain, Germany, and the United States, where it ranked among the most common names for girls born in the 1880s and 1890s.
Its decline was swift and steep, triggered largely by World War One: German forces deployed a massive siege howitzer that Allied troops nicknamed "Big Bertha" after Bertha Krupp von Bohlen, heiress to the Krupp arms dynasty. The name's association with industrial destruction proved devastating for its popularity, and it never fully recovered — a casualty of war in the most civilian sense possible. Today Bertha sits in an interesting position: old enough to feel genuinely vintage, its medieval brightness still legible beneath the twentieth-century barnacles.
Revival is not impossible — names like Mildred, Edna, and Gertrude are showing tentative signs of rehabilitation as the grandparent generation passes and the great-grandparent era becomes romantically distant. Bertha's meaning remains quietly wonderful: to name a child Bertha is to name them for radiance.