Courtney

This name is of Norman and Old French origin, introduced into England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The origin of this name is still today quite uncertain. The theories include: 1) From the Latin “curtus,” meaning “shortened, cut off, truncated, incomplete, mutilated, devoid of a part, short, insufficient.” 2) The second possible derivation is from a nickname for a person who had a snub nose, from the Old French “court, curt” (short) plus “nez” (nose). In some cases, bearers of the surname may be of Irish descent, since Courtney is also an Anglicized form of the Gaelic “O’Curnain,” a descendant of Curnan, from an Old Irish personal name of obscure origins. Courtney was used as a given name for men beginning at least as far back as the 17th-Century. As a given name for women, however, it gained full acceptance only in the years following the 1956 publication of the novel “Chocolates for Breakfast” by Pamela Moore, whose protagonist Courtney Farrell sometimes wishes she had been born a man.