Bettye

Where Bettye comes from

Bettye hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1883
    First appearance
    #920 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1924
    Bettye Ackerman born
    American actress
  3. 1933
    Peak, #220
    763 babies named Bettye — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1946
    Bettye LaVette born
    American soul singer-songwriter
  5. 1953
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #468.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Bettye Ackerman · American actress, 1924–2006
  • Bettye LaVette · American soul singer-songwriter, born 1946
  • Bettye Washington Greene · African-American chemist, 1935–1995
  • Bettye Swann · American singer-songwriter, born 1944
  • Bettye Lane · American photojournalist, 1930–2012

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.