Heimy is used as a nickname-style form of Chaim or Haim, the Hebrew name meaning life.
Heimy inhabits the warm, intimate world of Ashkenazi Jewish nicknames, most likely derived as a diminutive of Chaim (חַיִּים) — the Hebrew word for "life" itself. Chaim is among the most theologically freighted names in the Jewish tradition: to name a child Chaim is to invoke life as a blessing, a prayer, and a declaration all at once. The famous toast "L'chaim" (to life!)
captures the philosophical weight this root word carries across millennia of Jewish experience, from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the Lower East Side. In Yiddish-inflected Ashkenazi culture, names were routinely softened and personalized into affectionate diminutives — Chaim became Chaimke, Haimish, or Heimy, the last carrying an especially cozy, domestic quality. The word "haimish" itself (from the Yiddish for "homelike") describes a person who is unpretentious and warm, and Heimy as a name practically embodies that adjective.
It was the name a grandmother called a beloved grandchild, a name that lived in the kitchen and the synagogue social hall. Today Heimy occupies an interesting position: it carries the nostalgic warmth of a generation largely gone, evoking the immigrant Jewish communities of the early twentieth century, but it also possesses a quirky, unexpected freshness for contemporary ears unaccustomed to it. Parents in Orthodox communities may use it as a formal name rather than a nickname, while those outside those communities may discover it as a piece of family history worth reclaiming. Either way, Heimy is a name saturated with life — which, after all, is exactly what it means.