Beckett

The surname’s historical weight rests overwhelmingly on Saint Thomas Becket (1118-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, whose murder by knights of King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 made him one of the most venerated martyrs of

medieval Christendom.

Canonized just three years later in 1173, Becket’s shrine at Canterbury became the most popular pilgrimage destination in England until its destruction by Henry VIII in 1538.

Modern literary distinction came through the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, whose plays Waiting for Godot (1953), Endgame (1957), and Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) reshaped 20th-century theatre.

T. S. Eliot’s verse drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935) dramatized the saint’s martyrdom, and Jean Anouilh’s Becket (1959) was adapted into the 1964 film starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.

Beckett entered the SSA top 1000 for boys in 2006, riding the broader trend of literary surnames adopted as first names. It climbed rapidly through the 2010s, breaking the top 200 by 2018 and continuing into the top 150 in the 2020s.

Notable contemporary bearers include the son of actors Conan O’Brien and Liza Powel, and the character Kate Beckett of the television series Castle, played by Stana Katic from 2009 to 2016.