Betty
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A short bar used by thieves to wrench doors open; a jimmy
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɛti/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Betty is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 25th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 391(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 404
- SGSingapore≈1 in 416
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #221 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 551 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 391 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,400,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
English/German hypocoristic of Elisabeth.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
How Betty is read(measured from records)
Betty is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English80%
A short bar used by thieves to wrench doors open; a jimmy.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish6.1%
English/German hypocoristic of Elisabeth.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Betty counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈3,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 404 | — | Betty | 61 |
| US United States | #94 | 382,966 | 1 in 869 | 382K | Betty | 551 |
| GB United Kingdom | #144 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 635 | — | Betty | 209 |
| IT Italy | #160 | ≈87,000 est. | ≈1 in 715 | listed | Betty | 74 |
| EG Egypt | #606 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Betty | 30 |
| CA Canada | #99 | ≈62,000 est. | ≈1 in 606 | 5 | Betty | 217 |
| SG Singapore | #25 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 416 | — | Betty | 79 |
| IE Ireland | #60 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 391 | — | Betty | 67 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Betty is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Betty är ursprungligen en engelsk smekform till → Elisabeth. En tidig litterär gestalt i Sverige är Betti i Anna Maria Lenngrens satiriska dikt Några ord till min k. Dotter, ifall jag hade någon (tryckt 1798). Namnet var mycket populärt i slutet av 1800-talet, tillsammans med andra engelskinspirerade namn på -y.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Diminutif anglais d'Elizabeth; fête le 17 novembre.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In German, weibl. Vom., englische Koseform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Irish, A variant of Beatty. Both occur in Co. Fermanagh as synonyms of MacCaffrey
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Betty Bronsonb. 1906USAmerican actress (1906–1971)
- Betty Lou Gersonb. 1914USAmerican actress (1914-1999)
- Betty Grableb. 1916USAmerican actress and pin-up girl (1916–1973)
- Betty Holbertonb. 1917USAmerican computer programmer (1917–2001)
- Betty Fordb. 1918USFirst Lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977
- Betty Friedanb. 1921USAmerican feminist writer and activist (1921–2006)
- Betty Whiteb. 1922USAmerican actress and comedian (1922–2021)
- Lauren Bacallb. 1924USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1924–2014)
- Betty Cuthbertb. 1938AUAustralian sprinter (1938–2017)
- Betty Gilpinb. 1986USAmerican actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 109 sources across 57 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 382K | #123 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 504 | #123 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 212 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 28 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1988 | 6 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 5 | #789 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Betty?
- In the etymology graph, Lisa, Isabel and Beth are forms of the same name in other languages; Lillia is a recorded short or pet form; it is recorded as a short form of Elizabeth and Elsabeth.
- Where does the name Betty come from?
- English/German hypocoristic of Elisabeth. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- Is Betty a male or female name?
- Betty is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Betty mean?
- In English, A short bar used by thieves to wrench doors open; a jimmy.
- In which country does Betty have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.4 million people named Betty in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled betty.
- How do you pronounce Betty?
- A machine transcription gives /bɛti/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Betty?
- In the United States, the national register counted 382,966 people named Betty in 2020, about 1 in 869 residents.
- How common is Betty compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Betty is the 25th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Betty?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bettyThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Betty” — the 25th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.