The name Ruth is a name of Hebrew origin that was derived from the word ‘re’ut’ meaning ‘friend’. This is the name of the central character in the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament, she was an ancestor of King David.
Ruth is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Ruth isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Ruth ranks 238. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 8 were named Ruth. In total, there are currently 736,912 people – children, adults and seniors – named Ruth living in the United States, which is approximately 0.22 % of the entire population.
The name Ruth is a name of Hebrew origin that was derived from the word ‘re’ut’ meaning ‘friend’. This is the name of the central character in the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament, she was an ancestor of King David.
In England,... the name was associated with the archaic word 'ruth' meaning 'pity, compassion' (now only commonly seen in the word 'ruthless').
Ruth is a very special girls' name - although the peak of its popularity dates back more than 100 years, it belongs to the exclusive circle of only 432 girls names that haven been given in each of the 143 years for which official name statistics in the USA are available. The most popular was Ruth in 1893 - ranking #3 it even made it into the top 10 of the most popular girls names in our SmartGenius first name statistics.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Ruth was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
1,656 young parents chose the name Ruth for their newborn child in 2022, placing it at number 171 in our ranking of the most popular girls names - in other words, 170 names were given more frequently to girls in 2022. However, the rarest use of the name was in 2006 with only 889 babies given that name, which puts it at rank 347 in our SmartGenius first name statistics.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Ruth is one of them. However, Ruth is not equally widespread in all states, but people in West Virginia seem to particularly fancy this name – the 13,088 women called Ruth who live here are 0,887% of all female residents and push their name up to #11, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in West Virginia.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter R is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for girls' names: 4.1% of all common girls' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names are A and S, while X and U are the least common initials of girls' names.
With four letters, the name Ruth is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Thus, it follows that if 4.1% of all girls' names start with an R, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: Rebecca is the girls’ name starting with R, which is the most common of all.
If your name is Ruth and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Ruth, you can simply say:
Rocket
Unicorn
Tiger
Hat
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Ruth
Ruth
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
R
U
T
H
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
R
U
T
H
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Ruth sounds like this:
