Sir John Beith KCMG (4 April 1914 – 4 September 2000) was a British diplomat, ambassador to Israel and Belgium.
John Greville Stanley Beith was educated at Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1937 and served at the Foreign Office until 1940 when he was posted to Athens. When the German army approached Athens in April 1941 the British Embassy was evacuated and Beith spent the rest of the war in Buenos Aires. He returned to the Foreign Office 1945–49 and was then Head of the UK Permanent Delegation to the United Nations at Geneva 1950–53, Head of Chancery at Prague 1953–54 and Head of Chancery at Paris 1954–59. He returned to the Foreign Office again as head of the Levant department 1959–61 and head of the North and East Africa department 1961–63. He was Ambassador to Israel 1963–65, assistant Secretary-General of NATO 1966–67 and Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office 1967–69, during which he led the British delegation in talks on the future of Gibraltar, which ended with the Gibraltar sovereignty referendum, 1967. Beith's final diplomatic post was as Ambassador to Belgium, 1969–74.
Coordinates: 55°45′12″N 4°37′55″W / 55.7533°N 4.6319°W / 55.7533; -4.6319
Beith is a small town situated in the Garnock Valley, North Ayrshire, Scotland approximately 20 miles (30 kilometres) south-west of Glasgow. The town is situated on the crest of a hill and was known originally as the "Hill o' Beith" (hill of the birches) after its Court Hill.
Beith's name is thought to emanate from Ogham, which is sometimes referred to as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", ascribing names of trees to individual letters. Beithe in Old Irish means Birch-tree (cognate to Latin betula). There is reason to believe that the whole of the district was covered with woods. The town of Beith itself was once known as 'Hill of Beith' as this was the name of the feudal barony and was itself derived from the Court Hill near Hill of Beith Castle.
The Wood of Beit, now the 'Moor of Beith', has been identified as an Arthurian site where according to Taliessin in a poem under the name of 'Canowan' it was the site of a battle in the wood of Beit at the close of the day.
Beith is the Irish name of the first letter of the Ogham alphabet, ᚁ, meaning "birch". In Old Irish, the letter name was Beithe, which is related to Welsh bedw(en), Breton bezv(enn), and Latin betula. Its Proto-Indo-European root was *gʷet- 'resin, gum'. Its phonetic value is [b].
The Auraicept na n-Éces contains the tale of the mythological origins of Beith
In the medieval kennings, the verses associated with Beith are:
Peith ᚚ, a late addition to the Forfeda, is a variant of Beith, with a phonetic value of [p], also called beithe bog "soft beithe", [p] being considered a "soft" variant of [b]. It likely replaced Ifín ᚘ, one of the "original" five Forfeda. Prior to the addition of the Forfeda to the original twenty letters, both [p] and [b] were probably symbolized by the same letter: Beith.
Beith is a surname. Notable people with the name include: