From French 'amie' meaning friend or beloved.
Amie is the French spelling of Amy, ultimately derived from the Latin amatus — past participle of amare, to love — meaning 'beloved.' While the Anglicized Amy has been in continuous English use since the medieval period (Chaucer's Amy appears in The Knight's Tale), the French variant Amie carries a softer, more continental flavor, its final 'e' silent in French but often pronounced in English, lending it a distinctive two-syllable lilt. In French, amie simply means 'female friend' or 'girlfriend,' giving the name an aura of intimacy and warmth that its dictionary meaning reinforces.
Amy/Amie had its great literary moment in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), where Amy March — vain, artistic, and ultimately the most conventionally successful of the sisters — gave the name complex fictional associations it has carried ever since. The French spelling Amie distinguished itself slightly from that legacy, feeling fresher and less attached to Victorian parlor culture. In music, Pure Prairie League's 1971 country-rock ballad 'Amie' — one of the most beloved album cuts of the era — gave the spelling a gentle cultural foothold in North America, its chorus an earworm that embedded the name in a generation's memory.
Amie occupies a sweet spot today: short, warm, unambiguously feminine, and cross-cultural in its appeal. It requires no explanation and no unusual pronunciation, yet the French spelling separates it just enough from the crowd to feel considered. It ages gracefully and travels well across languages — a quietly confident choice.