Entry № 6794 · Latin origin

Merit Merit — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ MEH-rit /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Latin
Meaning
"Worthy / beloved (Merit Beauty + ancient Egyptian queen)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Ancient (Latin)

A name that means "worthy / beloved (merit beauty + ancient egyptian queen)".

Merit is from the Latin meritum ("deserved, earned") — also the ancient Egyptian Meryt ("beloved"). Merit Ptah (c. 2700 BCE) — sometimes cited as the first named woman physician in recorded history; an ancient Egyptian physician depicted in a tomb in Saqqara whose existence has been debated by modern Egyptologists. 2950 BCE); her tomb at Abydos is one of the largest 1st-Dynasty royal tombs.

Worthy / beloved.

The name in its native script.

Merit
Transliteration
Merit
Pronunciation
/ ˈmɛr.ɪt /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Merit stands.

Merit does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Merits before her.

Real people
Meritaten
Egyptian 18th Dynasty princess.
c. 1351 – 1338 BCE
Merit-Neith
Possibly first female pharaoh.
c. 2950 BCE
Merit Janow
Columbia SIPA Dean.
born 1958
In fiction

Names connected to Merit.

The number behind Merit.

2

The Peacemaker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Merit reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.