Ruth

Ruth is a Hebrew name, and the sense usually attached to it is friend, companion. The Hebrew root behind it points toward companionship, toward keeping close to another person.

The oldest bearer is the woman in the Book of Ruth. A Moabite widow, she refuses to leave her mother-in-law Naomi and follows her back to Bethlehem. Her line in that book, "where you go I will go," is one reason the name reads as loyalty made into a person. That same story makes Ruth the great-grandmother of King David. English speakers took the name up warmly after the Reformation, when Old Testament names spread through Puritan households, and it settled into both Protestant and Jewish families.

In Poland the name stays close to its Jewish roots. Read it on a class register and it marks a family that looked toward Hebrew tradition rather than the Latin saints. It has no Polish diminutive of its own, no softened variant. Ruth is simply Ruth.

The meaning holds steady: przyjaciółka, towarzyszka, friend and companion.