Marcella is the Latin feminine form of Marcellus, a diminutive of Marcus, and so is usually read as "little warrior" or "dedicated to Mars", the Roman god of war. Saint Marcella, a Roman noblewoman and friend of Saint Jerome, carried it into Christian use, and it was fairly common in Italian-American families a century ago. Marcella was a top 300 name in the 1920s, then faded; it stood at number 1026 in 2000 and has returned to number 948 in 2025, its first year in the US top 1000 in this century.