From Old English 'worð' meaning enclosed homestead or worthy one.
Worth is a name of Old English provenance, derived from the word worþ, meaning an enclosed settlement or homestead — the same root that survives in English place names like Tamworth and Haworth. As a surname it was common across the British Isles, attached to families whose ancestral lands bore that designation, and like many such surnames it eventually crossed into use as a given name during the nineteenth century vogue for bestowing family names upon children. Charles Frederick Worth, the English-born couturier who founded the first great Parisian fashion house in the 1850s, gave the name a certain elegance.
Worth became the name synonymous with haute couture itself, dressing empresses and aristocrats and effectively inventing the concept of the fashion designer as artist. That legacy lends the name an understated sophistication, the sense that beauty and value are inseparable. In contemporary usage Worth functions as a quietly confident given name, most common in the American South and Midwest where the tradition of surname-names runs deep.
It carries a philosophical resonance that few names can claim — every time someone says it, they invoke the question of merit and meaning. It suits a child you hope will grow into someone who knows their own value without needing to announce it.