A diminutive of Susan or Susannah, from Hebrew Shoshana meaning 'lily' or 'rose.'
Susy is a diminutive of Susan or Susannah, names tracing back to the Hebrew Shoshana, meaning "lily" — a flower symbol of purity, renewal, and beauty in both Jewish and Christian tradition. Shoshana appears in the Hebrew Bible, and its Greek rendering Susanna became a beloved name throughout the early Christian world, carried by Saint Susanna, a third-century Roman martyr. The name flowed through Latin, French, and English in various spellings before settling into Susan as the dominant English form.
The Susy spelling, with its final y, gives the name a particularly sprightly, informal quality. It evokes the casual intimacy of the nursery or the schoolyard — the version a grandmother might use, or that appears in a handwritten letter. Mark Twain immortalized a Susy in his life if not quite in his fiction: his beloved eldest daughter Olivia Susan Clemens, known as Susy, died at 24 in 1896, and Twain wrote about her with devastating tenderness in his autobiography.
Susan itself was one of the most popular American girls' names of the 1950s and 1960s, and Susy rode that wave as a pet form. It now sits in charming vintage territory — less stiff than Susan, less expected than Susie, with a slightly continental feel owing to its use in Spanish and Italian contexts as well. Writers, artists, and parents drawn to retro simplicity find in Susy a name that is both utterly familiar and quietly distinctive.