Bernadette is the French feminine diminutive of Bernard — from the Old Germanic bern (bear) + hardu (brave, strong). Saint Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879) — illiterate 14-year-old French peasant girl who between February and July 1858 reported 18 visions of the Virgin Mary in a grotto at Lourdes, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Lourdes has become the most-visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world — approximately 6 million pilgrims annually seeking the miraculous spring water. Bernadette's incorrupt body remains on display in Nevers, France. Canonized in 1933; feast day February 18 in France, April 16 elsewhere.
Subject of Henry King's The Song of Bernadette (1943 film) starring Jennifer Jones (Oscar).
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Bernadette reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.