Ruth has 834,300 cumulative American girls on SSA record, putting it among the deepest-rooted girls' names in the dataset. The 1920 peak at rank 5 sits more than a century in the past, but Ruth has been climbing back since 2010 and now sits at rank 172, its strongest position since the early 1970s. Few four-letter names carry this much chart history.
The Hebrew Bible and the meaning
Ruth comes from the Hebrew Rut, of disputed but most likely meaning "companion" or "friend." The Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible centers on a Moabite woman who chose to follow her widowed mother-in-law Naomi to Bethlehem, declaring "Whither thou goest, I will go" — one of the most-quoted lines of biblical loyalty in Western literature.
Ruth's biblical narrative is unusual for placing a non-Israelite woman in the genealogical line of King David and, in Christian readings, of Jesus. The book's themes of loyalty, kinship across difference, and quiet female agency have given Ruth a distinct cultural register from louder biblical names.
The American legal and cultural anchor
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020), associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1993 to 2020, became one of the most-recognized American Ruths of the 20th century, and her death in September 2020 coincided with a renewed surge in American girls being named Ruth. The 2018 documentary RBG and the 2018 biopic On the Basis of Sex contributed to the revival's middle stage.
Earlier 20th-century Ruths included author Ruth Stout, novelist Ruth Rendell, and Babe Ruth's daughters, but the late-career Ginsburg presence is the cleaner driver of the recent climb.
The counter-reading
Worth flagging that Ruth's tight, single-syllable structure runs against the prevailing American taste for longer, vowel-heavy girls' names. Ruth has no nickname, no soft tail, and no flowering middle. That spareness is exactly what some parents value, and exactly what others find too plain.
The 1920s peak places Ruth firmly in the great-grandmother revival cohort alongside Margaret, Eleanor, and Florence. Sibling pairings lean toward similarly short biblical or vintage picks: Ruth and Eve, Ruth and Clara, Ruth and Pearl. For more, browse 1920s decade picks. Middle names tend longer to balance the single-syllable first: Ruth Caroline, Ruth Eleanor, Ruth Margaret. The Babe Ruth association, while masculine, does not appear to deter parents picking Ruth for daughters today; the name's biblical weight outweighs the baseball reference for most American families.