In the folklore of various nations the scarab (beetle), has been given special significance. It has received world-wide veneration and consideration.

Manly Palmer Hall wrote:
   "The Egyptian scarab is one of the most remarkable symbolic figures ever conceived by the mind of man. It was evolved by the erudition of the priestcraft from a simple insect which, because of its peculiar habits and appearance, properly symbolized the strength of the body, the resurrection of the soul, and the Eternal and Incomprehensible Creator in His aspect as Lord of the Sun.

   Initiates of the Egyptian Mysteries were sometimes called scarabs. The scarab was the emissary of the sun, symbolizing light, truth, and regeneration.

   Ra, the god of the sun, had three important aspects. As the creator of the universe he was symbolized by the head of a scarab and was called Khepera, which signified the resurrection of the soul and a new life at the end of the mortal span. The mummy cases of the Egyptian dead were nearly always ornamented with scarabs. Usually one of the beetles, with outspread wings, was painted on the mummy case directly over the breast of the dead. The finding of such great numbers of small stone scarabs indicates that they were a favorite article of adornment with the Egyptians. Because of its relationship to the sun, the scarab symbolized the divine part of man's nature. The fact that its beautiful wings ere concealed under its glossy shell typified the winged soul of man hidden within its earthly sheath.

   An Egyptian allegory states that the sunrise is caused by the scarab unfolding its wings, which stretch out as glorious colors on each side of its body ‹ the scalar globe ‹ and that when if folds its wings under its dark shell at sunset, night follows. Khepera, the scarab-headed aspect of Ra, is often symbolized riding through the sea of the sky in a wonderful ship called the Boat of the Sun."

Did the Beatles have this symbolism of the beetle in mind when they took their name? Egyptian mythology deifies the beetle, and links it to the sun. Indeed it credits the scarab with guiding the sun. Is the Boat of the Sun the Yellow Submarine, riding through "the sea of the sky"?

Beatles with an 'A' (what's in a name?)

There are other words with the same sound.

Webster's New World Dictionary contains an interesting definition:

        betel nut  the fruit of the betel palm; in the Far East it is chewed together 
with a little lime and leaves of the betel ( pepper ) plant.

   Geologists, I learned, unhesitatingly attributed a meteoric origin to the Black Stone. Likewise pairs of sacred stones, known as betyls, that some pre-Islamic Arab tribes carried on their desert wanderings were believed to have been aerolites - and it was recognized that a direct line of cultural transmission linked these betyls with the Black Stone of the Ka'aba and with the Stone Tablets of the Law contained in the Ark [of the Covenant].

Betyls had been known in medieval Europe as lapis betilis - a name:

   ...stemming from Semetic origins and taken over at a late date by the Greeks and Romans of sacred stones that were assumed to possess a divine life, stones with a soul [that were used] for divers superstitions, for magic, and for fortune telling. They were meteoric rocks fallen from the sky.