Diminutive of David, from Hebrew meaning 'beloved.'
Davey is an affectionate diminutive of David, one of the most consequential given names in the entire history of Western civilization. David derives from the Hebrew Dāwīd, likely meaning "beloved" or possibly "uncle," and its bearer in the Hebrew Bible — the shepherd boy who slew Goliath and became Israel's greatest king — shaped the name's cultural weight for three millennia. The diminutive Davey (also spelled Davy) carries all of that heritage but wraps it in a warmer, more approachable register — the name of a favorite uncle rather than a king.
In the anglophone tradition, Davy has belonged to folk heroes and adventurers. Davy Crockett, the Tennessee frontiersman and congressman who died at the Alamo in 1836, became one of the defining mythological figures of American frontier culture, his name immortalized in a 1950s ballad that made "Davy" synonymous with coonskin-cap independence and pioneer spirit. Davy Jones, by contrast, entered maritime folklore as the presiding spirit of the ocean's depths — "Davy Jones's locker" being the sailor's term for the bottom of the sea where drowned men rest.
The name thus inhabits both the terrestrial and the oceanic imagination. Davey as a first name, rather than a nickname, has an informal, roguish warmth that makes it immediately endearing. It suggests someone at ease with themselves, unbothered by pretension — the kind of name that fits equally on a six-year-old and a sixty-year-old.
In the British Isles it has a particular Celtic resonance, common in Welsh and Scottish communities where David has always been especially venerated. Parents choosing Davey today often want to honor a family David while giving the child something that feels entirely his own.