Meaning & Origin
A surname from Old French.
Tracy is a girl's and boy's baby name of Old French origin, from the Norman habitational surname Tracey, from a place in Normandy, France. It transferred to given-name use in the English-speaking world during the 20th century, initially as a boys' name before shifting predominantly female in the U.S. by the 1960s.
Tracy was a top-10 U.S. girls' name in the early 1970s. The film Philadelphia Story's Tracy Lord and Tracy Chapman, the folk-rock singer, show the name's range from patrician glamour to raw, streetwise honesty. It's a name that could do with a fresh look — understated and direct.