Disney comes from an English surname with older French place-name roots, now mainly used as a modern borrowed name.
Disney is, at first glance, entirely defined by one man and the empire he built — but its origins predate animation by nearly a thousand years. The surname Disney derives from D'Isigny, a Norman French toponym referring to the town of Isigny-sur-Mer in Normandy. When William the Conqueror's followers came to England in 1066, the D'Isigny family came with them, and the name slowly anglicized over centuries into Disney.
Walt Disney's grandfather was born Elias Disney in Ontario, Canada, to Irish parents — a reminder that the name traveled from France to England to Ireland to North America before reaching its most famous bearer. Walter Elias Disney (1901–1966) so thoroughly transformed his family name into a global symbol of imagination, fantasy, and childhood wonder that using Disney as a given name carries enormous cultural freight. To name a child Disney in the contemporary world is to consciously invoke that mythology — the castle, the mouse, the phrase "the happiest place on earth."
It is an act of sincere, unironic enchantment, popular particularly in communities where Disney media has formed a central part of family culture. The name has appeared in birth records since the mid-twentieth century, mostly in the United States. As a given name, Disney occupies the same peculiar territory as Chanel, Armani, or Tesla — names borrowed from brands so culturally dominant that they've taken on an almost totemic quality.
Critics find such names derivative; admirers see them as tributes to genuine joy. For the child named Disney, the name is both an inheritance and a conversation starter, a word that will never be heard neutrally.