Beth is the English short form of Elizabeth — from the Hebrew Elisheba ("my God is my oath"); also the Hebrew letter bet (ב), meaning "house." Beth March — the gentle, pianist third sister in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), whose death from scarlet fever is among the most-cited literary deaths in American fiction. Beth Harmon — the chess prodigy heroine of Walter Tevis's The Queen's Gambit (1983) and Netflix's 2020 limited series (one of the most-watched series of the pandemic, 62M households in 4 weeks). Beth Dutton — the protagonist of Yellowstone (2018-2024), played by Kelly Reilly, considered one of the great contemporary American TV characters. A top-1000 US baby name from 1880 through 1998. Beth Hart, Beth Orton, Beth Gibbons (Portishead) — musicians. Beth Behrs (2 Broke Girls). Beth Mead (English football, 2022 Euros top scorer).
Featured throughout American and English literature.
Beth 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 Beth reduce to 8, The Visionary. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.