Pet form of Adela or Adelaide, from Germanic 'adal' meaning 'noble.'
Della is usually understood as a shortened form of names ending in -della, especially Adela, Adeline, or Delia, though in English it long ago became a given name in its own right. Its deepest roots therefore often lead back to the Germanic element adal, meaning “noble,” in the Adela line, while some bearers may connect it to the Greek-linked Delia, an epithet of Artemis meaning “from Delos.” That layered history gives Della an interesting dual character: it feels soft and intimate in sound, yet it carries old, dignified ancestry beneath its simplicity.
In English-speaking culture, Della is strongly colored by literature and song. Many readers first meet it through O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” whose devoted young wife, Della, helped fix the name in the popular imagination as warm-hearted, unpretentious, and deeply affectionate.
It also appears in American music and early film-era naming records, where it had a gentle Southern and Victorian charm. Della was more common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, then receded as tastes shifted toward brisker mid-century names. Today it feels revived in a different light: vintage, graceful, and understated rather than old-fashioned. Its appeal lies in that balance of sweetness and strength, a name small in form but carrying echoes of nobility, literary tenderness, and old-fashioned emotional sincerity.