Sydney

Sydney is a variation of Sidney both of which are the transferred use of an early Norman surname said to be derived from the baronial family name “Saint-Denis” (patron saint of France; see the name Dennis for more details). Originally rendered as “de Sancto Deonise” circa early 12th century, the surname would eventually be fused into Sidney/Sydney centuries later. Many scholars believe the original surname bearer was King Henry II’s chamberlain (a high ranking member of the king’s court who oversaw management of the monarch’s household). Sydney and Sidney may have also developed from an Anglo-Saxon surname derived from a place name; from the Olde English “sīdan” (side) and “iēg” (island), a surname assigned to a man “dwelling by the well-watered land” (for instance, the wide riverside meadow describing the landscape in Surrey England). Evidence indicates that the Sydney/Sidney has been in use in England as a masculine given name since the 1700’s but gained considerable popularity in the 1800’s, probably influenced by the Charles Dickens’s character Sydney Carton from “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859). Sydney has been primarily used for boys in the English-speaking world until the 1980’s when North America commandeered the name for little girls. Sydney is also considered a “place name” in reference to Sydney, Australia, which was named after the 1st British Earl Sydney (1733-1800). The New South Wales capital city of Sydney sits on the Tasman Sea; apropos, a well-watered land! Today Sydney is mainly a female name popular in both Canada and the United States.