Diminutive of Martin, from Latin 'Martinus' referring to Mars, the Roman god of war.
Marty most commonly serves as the affectionate shortening of Martin, whose roots reach back through Latin Martinus to Mars, the Roman god of war. The name's saint is Martin of Tours, a 4th-century Roman soldier who famously cut his military cloak in half to share with a freezing beggar — a gesture so celebrated that it became one of the founding images of Christian charity. Martin of Tours' chapel (containing his cloak, or cappa) gave us the word 'chaplain.'
Few names can claim to have shaped the vocabulary of an entire religious institution. Marty carries a distinctly mid-20th-century American warmth, conjuring the era when it was a common schoolyard name — friendly, unpretentious, belonging to guys who fixed cars and coached Little League. The 1955 film Marty, written by Paddy Chayefsky and winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, cemented the name's association with ordinary working-class New York life, telling the story of a Bronx butcher looking for love.
The film's power lay in treating that ordinariness as heroic, and it gave Marty a democratic dignity that no amount of familiarity has eroded. Pop culture extended the name's reach: Marty McFly in Back to the Future (1985) made it the name of every kid's ideal adventure companion — quick-witted, emotionally open, slightly overwhelmed but always rising to the moment. Marty Scorsese gave it the weight of cinematic genius. Today Marty functions both as a standalone name and as a diminutive, and it has that particular retro-friendly quality that makes it feel simultaneously vintage and completely usable — the kind of name a kid and a grandfather can both wear with equal ease.