Beverly
- Pronunciation
- [Be-ver-ly]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Woman From The Beaver Meadow. Beaver Stream.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Beverly
Beverly is an English place-name turned personal name, derived from the Old English elements beofor ("beaver") and lic or leac ("stream" or "meadow"), yielding the sense of "beaver stream" or "woman from the beaver meadow." Place-names of this type — transferred to personal use — were a distinctive feature of English and American naming in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when geographic surnames and location names carried connotations of landed heritage and genteel aspiration.
Beverly first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1926 and ascended to a peak of #14 in 1937. Like many place-derived names that surged between the wars, it enjoyed a long mid-century plateau before declining through the 1950s and exiting the top-1000 in 1964, when it ranked #91. Its total chart life of nearly four decades reflects the broad appeal it held across American regions, social classes, and ethnic communities during those years.
Today Beverly occupies the same warm, era-specific resonance as other English transfer names from that generation — instantly recognisable, carrying no sharp edges, and gently positioned for the kind of grandparent-name revival that has recently brought similar mid-century classics back into fashion. Recorded variants include the playful nickname Buffy and the spare, gender-neutral Lee.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Beverly
US Popularity History (1926–1964)
Annual US births named Beverly by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1953 with 11,240 girls named Beverly (girl rank #34 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1964, ranked #91 for girls (4,606 US births). That's 57 places below its 1953 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
Paste the snippet below on any HTML page. Includes a credit link back to 9BabyNames — please keep it intact.
Where in the US Is Beverly Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Beverly the strongest states are Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #570 | 21 |
| 2 | Wisconsin | #642 | 30 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #690 | 31 |
| 4 | Washington | #780 | 25 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #825 | 17 |
| 6 | Missouri | #848 | 31 |
| 7 | Ohio | #862 | 33 |
| 8 | Colorado | #863 | 22 |
| 9 | Michigan | #875 | 25 |
| 10 | California | #923 | 160 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Illinois | #1,052 | 25 |
| 2 | Arizona | #974 | 18 |
| 3 | California | #923 | 160 |
| 4 | Michigan | #875 | 25 |
| 5 | Colorado | #863 | 22 |
| 6 | Ohio | #862 | 33 |
| 7 | Missouri | #848 | 31 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #825 | 17 |
| 9 | Washington | #780 | 25 |
| 10 | Minnesota | #690 | 31 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Beverly in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lee | Unisexual Name Meaning "Plum" | Female | Chinese |
Looking for names like Beverly?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Beverly to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Beverly against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).