From Gaelic cruac meaning "little curl" or "bent one," famously borne by Davy Crockett.
Crockett as a given name is almost entirely an American phenomenon, and its story cannot be separated from the towering frontier legend of David "Davy" Crockett (1786–1836), the Tennessee frontiersman, congressman, and defender of the Alamo who became one of the 19th century's most celebrated folk heroes. His surname derived from the Old French *croc*, meaning a hook or crook, likely a medieval occupational name for a maker of hooks. But by the time American parents began bestowing it on sons, all etymological memory had been eclipsed by coonskin caps, tall tales, and the roaring mythology of the American West.
The practice of naming boys Crockett surged in waves tied to the hero's popular revivals. The first wave followed his death at the Alamo in 1836, which transformed a living eccentric into a martyr-saint of Manifest Destiny. A second, enormous wave came with the Davy Crockett media explosion of the 1950s — the Fess Parker television series produced the most recognizable theme song in American children's television and triggered a coonskin cap craze that swept the nation.
Parents of that era who named sons Crockett were deliberately invoking the archetype of the self-reliant, plain-speaking American individualist. As a first name Crockett has a bold, almost swaggering quality that suits it to the American South and West where frontier mythology runs deepest. It is rare enough to be distinctive without being eccentric, and it carries an unmistakably American narrative — the idea that a man from a log cabin could reshape history through sheer force of character.