Meaning & Origin
A female given name from Ancient Greek.
Bernice is a girl's and boy's baby name of Greek origin, from the Greek Berenikē — a Macedonian Greek form of the Greek Pherenikē, meaning "bearer of victory," from pherein ("to bring") and nikē ("victory"). It appears in the New Testament as the name of a Jewish princess.
Bernice ranked in the U.S. top 20 girls' names from the 1910s through the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (1920) gave the name a great literary moment — a tale of social reinvention with a satisfying revenge ending. It has a vintage character-name quality that makes it ripe for a revival.