Heidy

Heidy is a spelling of Heidi, originally a familiar form of Adelheid. Adelheid combines Germanic elements associated with nobility and kind or type, usually summarized as noble kind. The shorter name became especially familiar through Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, the story of a girl living in the Swiss Alps.

The novel connects Heidi with her grandfather, mountain life, and the relationships she forms away from home. Heidy preserves that recognizable sound while using y in place of the final i. The older name Adelheid also connects this family with Adelaide in English and French. A family choosing Heidy can therefore trace it both to an established Germanic name and to one of children’s literature’s best-known heroines.