Beverly is a place name turned given name with a long American history — 378,313 SSA records, a 1953 peak, and a current rank of 1046 that puts it exactly where Dorothy was a decade before its comeback. Beverly Hills gave the name glamour associations; Beverly Cleary gave it literary ones. The name is doing the slow, patient work of becoming interesting again.
Old English Place Name Origins
Beverly derives from the Old English place name Beverley, from beofor (beaver) and leah (clearing or woodland). The original Beverley is a market town in Yorkshire, England — and the place-name-as-given-name pattern has produced some of English's most durable names. Old English place name origins give names like Beverly, Shirley, and Ashley their specific combination of rootedness and openness — they're not etymologically charged with a particular quality, which lets them carry whatever associations they accumulate over time.
Beverly Cleary and Beverly Hills
Two Beverlys shaped the name's cultural identity on opposite ends of the glamour spectrum. Beverly Cleary — author of the Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins books, gave the name a warm, American, slightly mischievous literary personality. Beverly Hills, meanwhile, loaded it with aspirational mid-century California glamour. The TV series Beverly Hills, 90210 kept the latter association alive well into the 1990s. That tension between bookish warmth and L.A. polish is part of what makes Beverly interesting as a revival candidate.
Counter-Reading: The Timing and the Hills
The Beverly Hills association is double-edged, it gives the name sparkle but also pins it to a specific cultural moment that some parents will find more dated than charming. If the place-name appeal is the draw but you want something fresher, Arden works a similar angle with less pop-culture baggage. Beverly's full rehabilitation may require a generation that grew up after 90210 reached for the name unselfconsciously.