From Hebrew 'be'ulah' meaning 'married'; used in Isaiah as a name for the land of Israel.
Beulah is one of those names that carries an entire landscape inside it. The word appears in the Hebrew Bible in Isaiah 62:4, where the prophet declares that the land of Israel will no longer be called Desolate but will be renamed Beulah — from the Hebrew be'ulah, meaning "married," signifying a restored covenant between a people and their land. That image of belonging, of a forsaken place reclaimed and beloved, gave the name its lasting resonance.
John Bunyan transported it into English literary consciousness in The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), where the Land of Beulah is the serene country just beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where pilgrims rest before crossing the final river — a name for paradise's anteroom, golden and still. In American history, Beulah was particularly beloved in the South and among African-American communities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where its biblical weight made it a name of aspiration and dignity. It reached peak popularity in the United States around the 1880s through 1910s, a period when Old Testament names carried both religious sincerity and cultural prestige.
Over the twentieth century it fell sharply from fashion, partly due to its association with the Beulah radio and television series of the 1940s and 50s, whose stereotyped Black domestic character did the name's reputation no favors. In the twenty-first century, Beulah has been quietly reconsidered by parents drawn to vintage names with genuine depth — part of the same wave that revived Hazel, Opal, and Pearl — reclaiming its original beauty as a name of promised flourishing.