Zevy is a diminutive-style form of Zev, the Hebrew word for wolf.
Zevy is a warm, intimate diminutive of Zevi (also spelled Tzvi in Ashkenazic transliteration), an ancient Hebrew name meaning "deer" or "gazelle." The deer held a beloved place in Biblical poetry and metaphor — swift, graceful, associated with the open hillsides of the Land of Israel. In Genesis 49:21, the tribe of Naphtali is compared to "a swift deer," and the gazelle recurs throughout the Song of Songs as an emblem of beauty and beloved presence.
To name a child Zevi or Zevy was to invoke this whole constellation of natural grace. The name has been in continuous use in Jewish communities for millennia and gained particular prominence in Ashkenazic Europe, where it was often paired with the Yiddish cognate Hirsch (deer) — a child might be called Tzvi Hirsch, the Hebrew and Yiddish names reinforcing each other. Among notable historical bearers: Shabbatai Tzvi (1626–1676), the controversial Kabbalistic mystic who ignited one of the largest messianic movements in Jewish history before his conversion to Islam sent shockwaves through the entire Jewish diaspora.
In the modern State of Israel, Tzvi and Zevi appear as given names and family names across Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities alike. Zevy, as the diminutive form, strips away the formality and presents the name in its most affectionate register — the name a grandmother calls out across a kitchen, the name on a handwritten birthday card. In contemporary usage among Jewish families and increasingly beyond them, Zevy has found favor as a name that is ancient but wears its age with lightness: a single syllable that lands like a small bright coin, carrying centuries of tradition in a remarkably compact form.