Lucy
Where Lucy comes from
From Middle English Lucy, from Old French Lucie (notably after the Christian martyr Lucia of Syracuse), from Latin Lucia (feminine of Lucius, a Roman praenomen), from lux (“light”). The name of the Australopithecus skeleton came from the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, which was being played repeatedly at the dig site camp at the time of the discovery. The slang term for LSD also derives from the song name, which many believe is essentially a reference to the drug.
- Latin
- 2 syllables
- Vowel-ended
Along the way
- 1880First SSA yearAlready #44 among girls — 590 babies in the first year on record.
- 1968Lucy Lawless bornNew Zealand actress
- 1968Lucy Liu bornAmerican actress
- 2025Peak, #246,176 babies named Lucy — more than any year before or since.
- 2025The comebackBack to #24 after sinking to #587 in 1978.
In the dictionary
- A female given name from Latin.
Namesakes
- Lucy Liu · American actress, born 1968
- Lucy Lawless · New Zealand actress, born 1968
- Lucy Maud Montgomery · Canadian writer, 1874–1942
- Lucy Stone · American abolitionist and suffragist, 1818–1893
- Lucy Webb Hayes · First Lady of the United States from 1877 to 1881, 1831–1889
Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.