From Middle English/Old French 'escarlate,' a bright red cloth; also an occupational surname turned given name.
Scarlet began as a color word before it became a given name. The term entered English through Old French and medieval trade vocabulary, originally referring not simply to a hue but to a rich, luxurious cloth often associated with vivid red tones. By the late Middle Ages and afterward, scarlet had come to signify brilliance, rank, ceremony, and sometimes transgression, since red could suggest both splendor and sensuality.
As a name, Scarlet inherits all of that dramatic color symbolism. Its literary associations are unusually strong. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter made the word unforgettable in American literature, binding it to themes of shame, passion, social judgment, and moral complexity.
Much later, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind gave the name a glamorous, headstrong, Southern romantic identity. That spelling with a double “t” has often been the more famous modern form, though Scarlet also remains established. In either spelling, the name feels vivid, theatrical, and impossible to ignore.
As a given name, Scarlet gained traction in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries with the rise of color names and bold, image-rich choices. Unlike softer floral names, it projects heat and confidence. It can sound fashionable, cinematic, and a little rebellious, yet it also reaches back to medieval language and classic literature. Scarlet is a name shaped by color, cloth, and story: luxurious in origin, emotionally charged in culture, and still bright with symbolic force.