Entry № 477 · Greek origin

Althea Althea — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ al-THEE-ah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Greek
Meaning
"Healer (Althea Gibson, first Black tennis Grand Slam champion)"
Syllables
3
First recorded
Ancient (Greek)

A name that means "healer (althea gibson, first black tennis grand slam champion)".

Althea is from the Greek althaino ("to heal") — the mythological queen of Calydon in Homer's Iliad and the botanical name of the marsh mallow plant. Princess Althea of Calydon in Greek mythology — wife of Oeneus, mother of Meleager; her tragic fate after the Calydonian boar hunt is dramatized in Homer's Iliad Book 9 and Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (1865).

Healer. Althea Gibson was the first African American to win a tennis Grand Slam title (French 1956 + Wimbledon 1957).

The name in its native script.

Ἀλθαία
Transliteration
Althaía
Pronunciation
/ ælˈθiː.ə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Althea stands.

Althea does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Altheas before her.

Real people
Althea Gibson
American Grand Slam pioneer.
1927 – 2003
Althea Flynt
American activist.
1953 – 1987
In fiction
Queen Althea
Homer's Iliad.
c. 8th century BCE

Names connected to Althea.

The number behind Althea.

2

The Peacemaker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Althea reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.