Bettye

A variant of Betty, which originated as an English pet form of Elizabeth from the Hebrew name meaning 'my God is an oath.' The terminal -e took hold across the American South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It functioned as an ornamental flourish, turning a brisk nickname into a proper entry on a birth certificate.

The terminal vowel places the name firmly in a porch swing between the world wars. A Bettye is pictured managing a telephone tree, keeping a metal tin of recipe clippings, and signing thank-you notes in careful cursive. The average living bearer is seventy-nine years old. It is a name that largely stopped being handed out once rotary phones left the kitchen.