Diminutive of Gabrielle, from Hebrew meaning 'God is my strength.'
Gaby is the bright, informal short form of Gabrielle or Gabriel, names derived from the Hebrew Gavri'el, meaning "God is my strength" or sometimes rendered as "God is my strong man." The archangel Gabriel — messenger of divine announcements in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — is perhaps the most famous bearer of the root name, which gave Gabriel and its feminine forms a sacred authority across multiple faith traditions. Gaby strips away the formality while keeping that warmth at its core.
As a standalone name rather than merely a nickname, Gaby gained ground particularly in French-speaking cultures, where it has been used for both boys and girls, though it skews feminine in most Western contexts. In Spain and Latin America, Gabriela and its short form Gaby were enormously popular through the mid-20th century, carried by cultural figures including the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mistral's towering intellectual and moral presence gave the name — and by extension Gaby — a lineage of creativity and courage.
In contemporary use, Gaby functions as a name unto itself for parents who want something with the weight of a classic full name but the easy accessibility of a nickname from birth. It has a cheerful phonetic quality — short, open, ending on that bright "ee" sound that gives it energy without effort. Gaby reads as warm and confident, a name that is friendly without being diminutive, sophisticated without being stiff. It travels easily across languages and cultures, feeling at home in a Paris café, a Mexico City apartment, or a London school.