From Hebrew tovah, meaning good.
Tovah is the Hebrew feminine name meaning simply "good" — from the adjective *tov* (טוֹב), among the oldest and most fundamental words in the Hebrew language. The very first evaluative word spoken in the Torah is *tov*: God surveys the newly created light and pronounces it good. In that sense, Tovah carries inside it the first moment of divine aesthetic and moral judgment, a name rooted at the absolute beginning of the biblical story.
The masculine form Tov and its variants Toviah (Tobias) and Tovi appear throughout the Hebrew Bible, but Tovah has the warm distinction of being exclusively feminine in modern usage. The name gained notable cultural visibility through Tovah Feldshuh, the Tony Award-winning actress celebrated for her stage work — particularly her Golda Meir in *Golda's Balcony*, the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history — and her recurring television roles. Feldshuh brought the name before audiences who might otherwise never have encountered it, demonstrating both its warmth and its strength.
In Israel the name has long been in common use, and in diaspora Jewish communities it carries the familiar beauty of Hebrew without the more elaborate Biblical associations of names like Devorah or Rivkah. Tovah is a name that resists trend. It has never surged into mainstream popularity, never been fashionable, never been overexposed — and that steadiness is part of its character.
It means something exact and profound (good, good-hearted, one who embodies goodness) without ornamentation, and it wears its meaning without irony. For families wanting a Hebrew name that is complete in its simplicity, Tovah offers exactly that.