An English surname turned name, made famous by literary culture through Fitzgerald’s *The Great Gatsby*.
Gatsby belongs, first and forever, to literature. Jay Gatsby — born James Gatz — is the central enigma of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, widely considered one of the finest American novels ever written.
Gatsby is a self-invented man, a bootlegger and dreamer who constructs an entire false identity in pursuit of an idealized past, embodied by the green light blinking across the water at Daisy Buchanan's dock. Fitzgerald's portrait is simultaneously a love story, a critique of the American Dream, and an elegy for the Jazz Age. The name 'Gatsby' — crisp, slightly theatrical, ending in that hard 'y' — perfectly encapsulates the character's performed grandeur.
Etymologically, Gatsby derives from a Germanic surname tradition, possibly a variant of Gadsby, with roots meaning something like 'god's dwelling.' But the literary meaning has long overwhelmed any etymological one. When someone is called Gatsby, the world of West Egg, white suits, lavish parties, and tragic longing rushes in immediately.
Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film adaptation brought the name to a new generation, cementing its cultural currency. As a given name, Gatsby is genuinely rare and audacious — a literary allusion worn openly, requiring no explanation. Parents who choose it tend to be readers, romantics, and people who appreciate the way fiction shapes culture. It sits alongside other literary first names — Atticus, Holden, Isadora — that turn a novel's pages into a child's identity.