Pet form of Candace, possibly meaning queen mother, or from Latin 'candidus' meaning bright, white.
Candy began its life as a nickname — most commonly a diminutive of Candace, an ancient name of disputed but likely Nubian or Ethiopian origin, possibly meaning "queen mother" or "queen of Kush." Candace appears in the Acts of the Apostles as the title (or name) of an Ethiopian queen whose treasurer was baptized by Philip the Evangelist, lending it early Christian significance. But in American culture through the 20th century, all that ancient weight was cheerfully set aside, and Candy emerged as an independent given name in its own right, particularly from the 1940s through the 1970s, when short, bright, vowel-forward names for girls were at peak fashion.
The name's sweet, confectionery association is impossible to ignore and has shaped its cultural reception entirely. Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's 1958 satirical novel Candy — a bawdy parody of Voltaire's Candide featuring an impossibly innocent American girl — gave the name both notoriety and a certain self-aware irony. The 1968 film adaptation, with its psychedelic excess, lodged Candy firmly in the counterculture imagination.
In subsequent decades the name accumulated additional pop-cultural valence: Iggy Pop's "Candy" (1990), the film Candy (2006), various soap opera and reality television personalities. By the 1980s and 1990s, Candy had begun to feel dated in mainstream usage, too redolent of a particular bubblegum era. But names move in long cycles, and what reads as "dated" in one generation becomes "vintage" in the next.
Candy now occupies a retro-chic position not unlike Judy or Patty — unmistakably mid-century, but worn with enough self-possession it can feel fresh again. For parents drawn to short, sunny, unapologetically cheerful names, Candy delivers that uncomplicated brightness with a side of ironic nostalgia.