Meaning and history
Courtney comes from the aristocratic English surname Courtney, which was derived either from the French place name Courtenay, ultimately from the personal name Curtenus and Latin curtus meaning “short,” or from a Norman nickname meaning “short nose.” In America it was originally an uncommon unisex name, but it became more popular for girls in the mid-1960s and rose sharply after 1973, possibly because of a character played by Natalie Wood in the television movie The Affair. It peaked in the United States at rank 17 in 1990 and has declined rapidly since then.
20062006: 1,835 births, rank #191
2007: 1,514 births, rank #233
2008: 1,268 births, rank #270
2009: 1,062 births, rank #308
2010: 900 births, rank #354
20112011: 753 births, rank #418
2012: 639 births, rank #480
2013: 558 births, rank #534
2014: 419 births, rank #678
2015: 374 births, rank #754
20162016: 349 births, rank #822
2017: 277 births, rank #952
2018: 202 births, rank #1,186
2019: 190 births, rank #1,233
2020: 157 births, rank #1,389
20212021: 123 births, rank #1,680
2022: 121 births, rank #1,720
2023: 105 births, rank #1,890
2024: 99 births, rank #1,980
20252025: 78 births, rank #2,326
Courtney moved from #822 to #954 for girls between 2016 and 2017. Its highest annual birth count came in 1990, with 15,380 births.