An English word-name associated with wind, breeziness, and a light, airy feel.
Windy is an American nature-inflected name that came to prominence in the mid-twentieth century, riding the wave of breezy, optimistic names popular in the postwar era — a time when parents reached toward the natural world for names that felt fresh, open, and distinctly American. Its most direct ancestor is the English adjective windy, from the Old English windig, rooted in wind, which traces all the way back to the Proto-Germanic windaz and ultimately to the Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to blow." The name gained significant cultural currency through "Windy," the 1967 hit single by The Association, which painted a portrait of a free-spirited, elusive young woman — "Who's tripping down the streets of the city / Smiling at everybody she sees?"
— and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The song crystallized a particular 1960s ideal of femininity: uncontainable, joyful, slightly mysterious, and in perpetual motion. For parents of that era and the decade that followed, naming a daughter Windy was a way of invoking that spirit.
Outside the musical association, Windy sits in the tradition of weather and nature names — names like Sunny, Misty, and Skye — that peaked in the 1960s and 1970s and are now rare enough to feel retro-distinctive. It is sometimes used as a nickname for Winifred or Gwendolyn, but stands perfectly well on its own. A name built entirely from natural imagery, it carries the sense of something that cannot quite be held — light, moving, and perpetually arriving from somewhere interesting.