Meaning:
Its source is Courtenay, a Norman French name meaning "Domain of Curtius."
Popularity:
The name Cortney ranked 863rd in popularity for females of all ages in a sample of 2000-2003 Social Security Administration statistics and 1008th in popularity for females of all ages in a sample of the 1990 US Census.
Though this name has fluctuated in use, it has been quietly present throughout the last century.
Narrative:
This is the surname of an aristocratic British family whose ancestors originated in Courtenay in northern France.
That place name is based on a Latin personal name meaning ''short,'' so it was not entirely inappropriate for people to have associated this name with the sound-alike French phrase court nez, meaning ''short nose,'' as they did long after the family had left its ancestral home.
