Macbeth

Macbeth is an Anglicized form of the Scottish Gaelic name Mac Bethad, meaning “son of life.” The historical Macbeth was an eleventh-century king of Scots whose reign was more stable than Shakespeare’s tragedy suggests. William Shakespeare’s Macbeth transformed him into a ruler destroyed by ambition, prophecy, and murder, making the name strongly literary. A notable modern bearer is South African footballer Macbeth Sibaya. The name began as a Gaelic patronymic, not a word meaning evil or ambition.