Ruth
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Medieval nickname for a person who took pity on others or was worthy of pity
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹuːθ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ruth is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 55th most common given name.
- PEPeru≈1 in 473(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 562
- CNChina≈1 in 571
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)
- #237 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 578 (measured from records)
- 1 in 436 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,400,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
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)
Medieval nickname for a person who took pity on others or was worthy of pity.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ruth 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 | — | ≈2,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 571 | — | Ruth | 49 |
| NG Nigeria | #93 | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 594 | — | Ruth | 123 |
| US United States | #105 | 285,959 | 1 in 1.2K | 286K | Ruth | 578 |
| GB United Kingdom | #96 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 562 | — | Ruth | 327 |
| DE Germany | #213 | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 904 | listed | Ruth | 208 |
| PE Peru | #947 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 473 | 104K | Ruth | 65 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 38,802 | 1 in 436 | 39K | — | 43 |
| SG Singapore | #55 | ≈9,700 est. | ≈1 in 641 | — | Ruth | 98 |
| NZ New Zealand | #87 | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 580 | — | Ruth | 137 |
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; RENIEC — DNI population names; INEC — civil registry names. 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)
Ruth is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Ruth represents the virtue of 'hesed' (loving-kindness/loyalty) and demonstrates God's grace extending to Gentiles, integrating them into the covenant people of Israel.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
A classic biblical name symbolizing deep friendship, loyalty, and devotion.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, from ME reuthe ‘pity’; first attested William Ruth 1180 P (L)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Biblical name of unknown derivation; increasingly popular in Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, wretched one, from ME reuthe pity (a deriv. of rewen to pity, OE hreowan). The given name Ruth was little used in the Middle Ages among non-Jews, and is unlikely to have had any influence on the surname. Rutherford Scots: habitation name from a place in the
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)
- Ruth Benedictb. 1887USAmerican anthropologist and folklorologist (1887-1948)
- Ruth Gordonb. 1896USAmerican actress and writer (1896–1985)
- Ruth Handlerb. 1916USAmerican businesswoman
- Ruth Prawer Jhabvalab. 1927USGerman-born British-American author (1927-2013)
- Ruth Bader Ginsburgb. 1933USAmerican lawyer and jurist (1933–2020)
- Margot Kidderb. 1948CAnot in their usual nameCanadian and American actress and activist (1948–2018)
- Cheryl Hinesb. 1965USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Angela Beesleyb. 1977GBnot in their usual nameco-founder of Wikia
- Ruth Wilsonb. 1982GBBritish actress
- Alexandra Shippb. 1991USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer
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 149 sources across 79 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 286K | #183 |
| PE Peru | RENIEC — DNI population names | 2019 | 104K | #10 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 39K | #43 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.8K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 423 | #183 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 177 | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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 does the name Ruth mean, and where does it come from?
- Medieval nickname for a person who took pity on others or was worthy of pity. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Ruth a male or female name?
- Ruth 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.
- In which country does Ruth have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.4 million people named Ruth in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ruth.
- Where is Ruth most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ruth is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 436 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Ruth?
- In the etymology graph, Rut, Rute and Ruta are forms of the same name in other languages; Ruthie is a recorded short or pet form.
- How do you pronounce Ruth?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹuːθ/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Ruth?
- In the United States, the national register counted 285,959 people named Ruth in 2020, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Ruth compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Ruth is the 55th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ruth?
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/ruthThe 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, “Ruth” — the 55th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.