Sydney

Where the name comes from

• Old English (via an English place name and surname)
  Wide island or wide riverside meadow
  sīd (wide, large, spacious) + ēg / īeg (island, land by water)
  Sydney is a spelling of the English surname Sidney. That surname came from a place name. One known example is Sidney Farm in Alfold, Surrey, England. In Old English, the word for "island" could also mean dry land beside a river or in a marsh. That is why the name is often read as "wide riverside meadow." Sources give slightly different readings of the first part: most say "wide" or "spacious," and one says "side."
• Old French (secondary theory)
  From Saint-Denis, a place named for Saint Denis
  Saint-Denis, the name of several places in Normandy
  One surname dictionary says some Sidney families may have taken their name from Saint-Denis in Normandy. The Old English origin is the main one. The idea that every Sydney means "from Saint Denis" is a popular belief, not the established origin.

Sydney across traditions

• English aristocratic and literary. The Sidney family was well known in Tudor England. Their best-known member was the poet and soldier Sir Philip Sidney. In his time he was seen as the ideal gentleman.
• Place names. Sydney, Australia, was founded in 1788. It was named for the British Home Secretary Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney. Many people now link the given name with the city.
• American naming. Sydney started as a family name. Over time it became a given name for both boys and girls. In the US it was a top name for girls around the year 2000.

Who carried it

• Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586): English courtier, statesman, soldier and poet. He wrote the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella and the prose romance Arcadia.
• Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney (1733–1800): British Home Secretary. The Australian city of Sydney is named for him.

Forms in other languages

Sidney

Sydney in letter-number systems

Hebrew, Greek and other traditions gave every letter a number, and read meaning into the totals. These are the counts, computed; the readings are inside the Innerverse.