From French chérie meaning dear or beloved, or an anglicized form of the Hebrew Sharon.
Sherry leads a double life etymologically. On one path, it is an anglicized pet form of the French Chérie, meaning "darling" — a term of endearment that became a given name through the same affectionate impulse that turned Cheryl and Cherry into staples of the mid-twentieth century.
On another, it derives from the fortified wine shipped from Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain; the English mispronunciation of Jerez as "Sherris" eventually yielded "sherry," and the pleasant associations of the amber wine lent the name a warm, sociable glow when it entered common use as a given name in the 1940s and 50s. At its peak in the 1960s, Sherry was among the top fifty girls' names in the United States, carried upward in part by the Four Seasons' 1962 hit "Sherry," which lodged the name permanently in the American cultural ear. The name was associated with a particular mid-century femininity — friendly, unpretentious, distinctly American — and it was borne by figures ranging from journalist Sherry Lansing, the first woman to head a major Hollywood studio, to countless ordinary women who wore it as a badge of their era. Today Sherry has the pleasant patina of a vintage name ripe for rediscovery: warm, melodic, and entirely free of the overuse that makes some mid-century names feel exhausted.