A female given name, sometimes spelled with a variant like 'Marley' or 'Marlene'; becoming more popular in modern times.
Possibly a modern creation or variant of names like 'Marlene' or 'Marla' could derive from Latin 'maris' (of the sea) or be related to 'Margaret'. The etymology is uncertain as it may be a 20th-century invention.
Names like Marla exploded in popularity in the 1950s-70s, which is why certain names feel 'dated'—linguists can actually track decades by which baby names were trendy. A name from 1975 sounds completely different than one from 2020.
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