From Scottish/French 'bon' meaning 'good,' conveying beauty and cheerfulness. Variant of Bonnie.
Bonny — like its more common twin Bonnie — flows directly from the Scots and northern English adjective bonny, meaning beautiful, pleasant, healthy, and bright-spirited. The word itself traces back through Middle English to the Old French bon (good), ultimately from the Latin bonus. In Scotland the term carried particular warmth, applied to children, landscapes, and beloved people with equal affection, and the name absorbed all of that emotional generosity.
The name's most resonant historical association is with Bonnie Prince Charlie — Charles Edward Stuart, the Jacobite claimant who led the 1745 uprising to reclaim the British throne. The folk song "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," which became one of the most widely sung songs in the English-speaking world, fixed the word permanently in the emotional vocabulary of longing and love. Later, the outlaw Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame gave the name a thrilling, dangerous edge entirely at odds with its sweet etymological roots — a tension that made it more interesting.
Bonny with a y rather than ie has a slightly more antique, formal appearance on paper while sounding identical aloud. It was well used through the mid-20th century and has the warm, unguarded quality of a name from a simpler era — cheerful without being cloying, familiar without being exhausted. In an age of elaborate invented names, Bonny's uncomplicated brightness is itself a kind of distinction.