Variant of Chloe, from Greek 'chloē' meaning young green shoot or blooming.
Cloey is an imaginative respelling of Chloe, a name of ancient Greek origin derived from the word khloē, meaning "blooming," "green shoot," or "young foliage" — specifically the pale green of new plant growth in spring. In Greek mythology, Chloe was an epithet of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, used in her aspect as the nurturer of young, green crops. The name thus carries an elemental association with fertility, renewal, and the tender vulnerability of new life.
Chloe appears in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 1:11), making it one of the few explicitly Greek names with both pagan mythological depth and early Christian usage. Its most celebrated literary appearance is in the ancient Greek pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe, attributed to the author Longus (circa second to third century AD), which follows the innocent romantic awakening of two young shepherds and established Chloe as the archetypal name for pastoral beauty and natural grace. The name was adopted enthusiastically by English writers and poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, appearing in pastoral verse as a stock figure of rustic loveliness.
In the contemporary English-speaking world, Chloe surged dramatically in popularity from the 1980s onward and has remained a perennial favorite. The Cloey spelling, substituting an e for the h, represents the modern tendency to soften and phonetically simplify spellings while maintaining the name's essential sound and warmth. For parents who love the name but want something slightly less common on school rosters, Cloey offers the same breezy, verdant character in a less frequently encountered form.