Vanity is an English word name from Latin vanitas, meaning emptiness or pride, later used as a bold modern virtue-style name.
Vanity traces its etymology to the Latin *vanitas*, meaning emptiness, futility, or worthlessness — a concept central to the opening verses of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." The word entered Middle English through the Old French *vanité* and initially carried primarily theological weight, denoting the foolishness of worldly pride and self-admiration. John Bunyan immortalized the concept as a place in *The Pilgrim's Progress* (1678), where Vanity Fair — a perpetual market of worldly temptations — became one of English literature's most enduring allegorical settings, later borrowed by William Makepeace Thackeray for his celebrated 1848 novel.
As a given name, Vanity has always existed in creative and countercultural spaces. Its most prominent bearer was Denise Matthews, the Canadian singer and actress who adopted the stage name Vanity while performing under Prince's mentorship in the early 1980s. Her group Vanity 6 and the provocative glamour she embodied transformed the word from a moral warning into a symbol of confident self-presentation and artistic audacity.
This reclamation gave the name a distinctly artistic and rebellious charge. Vanity sits today in the rare category of virtue-or-vice names — alongside names like Envy, Chastity, or Serenity — where the tension between the word's original moral meaning and its use as a personal name creates a kind of philosophical hum. It remains uncommon, chosen by parents who embrace bold, unconventional naming and who are comfortable with a name that demands the bearer own it completely.