Scarlett or Scarlet is a feminine name derived from an English surname with an occupational meaning, referring to a person who sold cloth of scarlet. It gained popularity due to the character Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel Gone with the Wind and the film adaptation. More recently, its profile has been on the rise due to the fame of the actress Scarlett Johansson. The name was the 39th most popular name given to baby girls in the England and Wales in 2007. It was the 45th most popular name given to baby girls in New South Wales, Australia in 2007 and the 93rd most popular name given to baby girls in Chile in 2006. It was the 296th most popular name given to baby girls in the United States in 2006.
The name also has associations with the bright red color scarlet and, indirectly, with the Biblical scarlet woman and Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which heroine Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet letter A as a sign of her adultery.
People named Scarlett include:
- Scarlett Johansson (born 1984), American actress
- Scarlett Keegan, American model and actress
- Scarlett Pomers (born 1988), American actress
- Scarlett Werner (born 1988), German tennis player
Fictional characters so named include:
- Scarlett O'Hara, main character in the novel and film Gone with the Wind
- Scarlett (G.I. Joe), in the G.I. Joe universe
- Scarlett Adams, Indonesian-English girl with strange powers from The Power of Five book series
- Scarlett Nicholls, from the British ITV soap opera Emmerdale
- Scarlett Valentine, in the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street
- Scarlett, in the e4 TV series Skins
- Scarlett O'Hara St. Jones, character in the movie Steamboy