Ruby
Meaning of Ruby
Emerging from the Latin rubinus—literally “reddish” and by extension the lustrous corundum treasured by ancient Romans—Ruby is a given name that metaphorically glows with connotations of vitality, ardor, and protective strength, qualities historically attributed to its gemstone namesake. Adopted into English in the late Victorian era, when gem-inspired names scintillated in popularity, Ruby has traced a cyclical arc in the United States: dominant in the 1910s and 1920s, retreating mid-century, and, according to recent national data, ascending once more to stand comfortably within the top seventy names for newborn girls. This modern resurgence, while quantifiable, also echoes a broader cultural penchant for vintage brevity—names that are at once evocative and succinct. In symbolic terms, Ruby’s fiery chromatic heritage aligns it with July’s birthstone, biblical references to wisdom, and even the Marian hue of divine love in Catholic iconography, thereby granting the name an array of interdisciplinary resonances that span mineralogy, theology, and cultural history. As such, Ruby offers parents a succinct phonetic form whose historical, chromatic, and emotional dimensions converge in a single, vividly hued appellation.
Pronunciation
English
- Pronunced as ROO-bee (/ˈruːbi/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named Ruby
| Ruby Rose Langenheim is an Australian actress, television presenter, and model known for Orange Is the New Black and for starring as Batwoman in the Arrowverse. |
| Ruby Dee was an acclaimed American actress who often performed with her husband Ossie Davis and earned Emmy and Grammy awards, an Oscar nomination, the National Medal of Arts, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors. |
| Ruby Bridges is an American civil rights activist who, at six, became the first African American child to integrate William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans in 1960 and was later depicted in the 1964 Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With. |
| From 1960 until her death in 1967, Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson served SNCC as a field organizer and administrator, became the only woman to serve as its executive secretary after James Forman, and spent 100 days in jail for the cause. |
| British artistic gymnast Ruby Esther Harrold Hollander was a 2016 Olympian and 2015 world team bronze medalist, a 2012 Olympic reserve who later competed for LSU on a full scholarship. |
| Ethel Ruby Keeler was a Canadian American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her Warner Bros musicals with Dick Powell, notably 42nd Street, was married to Al Jolson from 1928 to 1940, retired in the 1940s, and staged a widely publicized Broadway comeback in 1971. |
| Ruby Garrard Woodson was an educator and chemistry teacher who founded Cromwell Academy in Washington DC and the Florida Academy of African American Culture in Sarasota Florida. |
| Ruby Green Smith was an American entomologist, peace campaigner, and home economics educator, best known for authoring The Home Bureau Creed. |
| Ruby Myers, better known as Sulochana, was a trailblazing Indian silent and Hindi film actress and a 1973 Dadasaheb Phalke Award honoree. |
| Ruby Beatrice Pernell was a social work professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Case Western Reserve who in 1963 served as social work attache at the US Embassy in India. |
