Courage comes from an English virtue word ultimately from Old French, meaning bravery or boldness.
Courage arrives in the English language from the Old French "corage" and ultimately from the Latin "cor" — heart. In medieval understanding, courage was not merely bravery but a quality of the heart in the most literal sense: the seat of feeling, will, and moral resolve. To have courage was to have a strong heart.
The word's journey from anatomical metaphor to moral virtue is one of language's most elegant evolutions, and using it as a given name recaptures that original wholeness — naming a child not just for bravery but for heart itself. Virtue names have a long history in English-speaking Protestant traditions: Puritan families named children Patience, Prudence, Constance, and Grace as declarations of aspiration and faith. In West African and particularly Nigerian naming culture, virtue names carry equal weight — names meaning Blessing, Victory, or Courage are given as prayers and expectations, statements about who a child is meant to become.
This convergence gives Courage an unusual cross-cultural life, feeling at home in both Anglophone Christian and African naming contexts. In Ghanaian and Nigerian communities, English virtue names are common and respected. In popular culture, "Courage the Cowardly Dog" — the Cartoon Network series that ran from 1999 to 2002 — gave the name an affectionate, slightly ironic resonance: a dog whose name is Courage but who is perpetually terrified, and who acts heroically anyway. That framing — courage not as the absence of fear but as action despite it — is actually the classical definition of the virtue, and the show's enduring cult following means that naming a child Courage in the twenty-first century comes with a gentle pop-cultural wink alongside its serious moral weight.