A female name. Hebrew Elisheba, ‘God is swearer’, or ‘God has sworn’, the name of the wife of Aaron and of the mother of St John the Baptist. The Greek form of the name was ’Ελίσαβετ, the Latin Elizabetha; in England the spelling with a z has been usual, on the Continent that with an s. It was first used as a christian name in the Eastern Church, and made its way from Russia to Germany and the Low Countries and thence to France, where it was transformed into Isabel (q.v.), the usual English medieval form of the name. Elizabeth is found in England from time to time in the 13th and 14th C, but did not become common until the end of the 15th C. The medieval use of the name, such as it was, was probably a tribute to St Elizabeth of of Hungary (1207-31) rather than to the mother of the Baptist.

There are no English church dedications in this name and it has given rise to no surnames. The cause of its later immense popularity was undoubtedly the long and successful reign of Elizabeth Tudor, who was presumably named after her grandmother Elizabeth of York and her great grandmother Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV. At the end of the 15th C Elizabeth was still a comparatively rare name; by 1560 it accounted for 16 per cent of female baptisms, and by 1600 for over 20 per cent, a position which it held for at least 200 years. No name has been more prolific of diminutives, many of which have from time to time established themselves as independent names, a circumstance which gave rise to the old riddling rhyme: Elizabeth, Betsy, Betty and Bess Went out one day to find a bird’s nest, They found a nest with five eggs in it They each took one and left four in it.

The chief of these are the following: Eliza (used of the cpeen by 16th-C poets, and popular in the 18th and early 19th C; Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice calls Elizabeth Bennet Eliza, though her family call her Lizzy); Betty (fashionable in the 18th C until it became too common, was relegated to chambermaids and the like, and gradually died out, to be restored to fashion in the 20th C); Bess and Bessie (common in the 16th C and revived in the 19th C to take the place of Betty); Betsey, Lizzie or Lizzy, Tetty, Tetsy, Beth; Scottish variants are Elspeth, Elspie, and Elsie, the last of which is now often used as an independent name. The German Elsa, Lise, Lisl, Italian Bettina and French Élise, Lisette, and Babette are all occasionally used in England. Elizabeth and Isabel were early differentiated, but were sometimes treated as the same name as late as the end of the 15th C; e.g. in 1483 there is a record of one Ysabell or Elisabeth Cutler. Elizabella was a 16th-C coinage.

Elizabeth Curia Regis Rolls 1205. Elizabez Curia Regis Rolls 1207. Elizabet Feudal Aids 1303.

ELISABETH. Hebrew, ‘God hath sworn,’ or ‘oath of God’: ‘in memory of the covenant made with Abraham’ (Swan). It is known in many forms: see Eliza, Bessy, Betsy, Betty, Liz, Lizzie, Liza, Lisa, Libby. Moreover, Isabella, Isabel, and their derivatives represent a Romance variation of the Biblical form. The original name seems to have been Elisbeba (cf. the Italian Elisabetta), and ‘this developed through the Greek and the Latin into Elisabeth’ (Swan): whence Elizabeth, a form not improved by those poets who turned Queen Elizabeth into Eliza. Elizabeth has been famous in history both politically and ecclesiastically; spelt with an s, it is borne by four saints, the earliest being the mother of St. John the Baptist, the latest that daughter of Peter II of Aragon who, married to Dionysius, King of Portugal, became ‘for the King and Court a striking pattern of every virtue’ and who, on his death, ‘took the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis, and devoted herself to good works’ until her death in 1336 (Benedictines).

From the Greek form’Ελισαβεθ,’Ελισαβετ; from the Scripture name אֱלִישֶׁבַע Eliyshebha, which St. Jerome translates ‘oath of my God;’ Simonis, ‘oath of God;’ Tregelles, ‘to whom God is the oath, who swears by God,’ i. e. worshipper of God; and Jones var. ‘God of the seven, oath of my God, of God is her oath;’ from El God, shébha seven; also an oath. Hence, as nicknames, Lisa, Libby; also Bess, Bet, Betty, Bessy, and lb; and the Scottish Lizzie and Bessie.