Fey comes from an English word with roots in Old French, meaning fairy-like, enchanted, or visionary.
Fey is a name draped in enchantment and ancient unease. Its primary roots reach back to Middle English and Old French fae or fee, referring to fairy folk and the supernatural realm they inhabited — a world just beyond the edge of human perception, beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. In medieval literature, to be "fey" was to be touched by that otherworld, either blessed with second sight or marked by a strange fate.
The Old English cognate fæge carried the heavier meaning of being "doomed" or "fated to die," lending the word a melancholy shimmer that persisted through centuries of literary usage. The Faerie tradition in English poetry — from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream — cemented the fey aesthetic as one of gossamer beauty intertwined with peril. To call someone fey in Victorian and Edwardian usage was to suggest they possessed an ethereal, otherworldly quality: dreamlike, whimsical, not quite of this earth.
As a given name, Fey is exceptionally rare and carries enormous expressive weight precisely because of that rarity. In modern pop culture, the name is also associated with the comedian and writer Tina Fey, whose sharp wit reframed feyness as intellectual playfulness rather than supernatural fragility. Parents choosing Fey today are making a bold, literary statement — selecting a name that whispers of fairy tales, old magic, and a child who might see the world slightly differently than everyone else.