Thelma was coined by the English novelist Marie Corelli for her 1887 bestseller Thelma, A Society Novel — possibly from the Greek thelēma ("will, desire") or invented as a euphonious modern name. Thelma & Louise (1991) — Ridley Scott's road film starring Susan Sarandon (Louise) and Geena Davis (Thelma); both received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Callie Khouri won Best Original Screenplay; the film became one of the most-influential feminist films of the 1990s, sparking decades of cultural debate; the closing scene of the Thunderbird sailing off the canyon edge has been parodied and referenced across global cinema.
Thelma 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.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Thelma reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.