Marla
"marla" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Marla” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #39,417 in English word frequency and used as a proper noun.
- #39,417
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A female given name from Hebrew.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Marla |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #39,417 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Marla” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Marla is 5 letters long, classified as a proper noun. Corpus data places it at rank #39,417 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A female given name from Hebrew.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for Marla, with forms such as "amrla", "malra", and "maral". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "MLA", "Mary", "mars", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: American back-formation from Marlene, first used in the 1930s. The correct English form is Marla, spelled M-A-R-L-A.
Definition
- 1A female given name from Hebrew.
Etymology
American back-formation from Marlene, first used in the 1930s.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amrla,malra,maral,marlla,marrla,mmarla,mrala
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of Marla - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “Marla”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-A-R-L-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “MLA” - see the side-by-side comparison. Marla vs MLA
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.