Comments (Meaning / History Only)

The name Guy is said to have different roots and/or meanings.It comes from the Hebrew word גוֹי 'goy' ("gentile, nation"). It also contains the Ancient Germanic roots witu / widu / vitu. The English name Guy, pronounced /'gai/ originated between the period 1325–75. It came to England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when it was originally pronounced as its French version /gi/. It stems from the Middle English word guide and the Middle English word wit, which came from the Old English word witt ("understanding, intellect, sense, knowledge, consciousness, conscience”). Associated with Old English word wita ("wise man") and its plural witan ("wise men"), borrowed from Old English witan (“to see, take heed to, watch after, guard, keep”). The English occupation name for a guide came from Old French gui (a derivative of gui(d)er ‘to guide’).From the Old French word guide, from Old Occitan guida, from the verb guidar, ultimately of Germanic origin from Medieval Latin (root vit), from Frankish verb witan (“to show the way, lead”), from Proto-Germanic wītaną ("to go, go forth, depart, to see, know"), from witaną (“to know”), from Proto-West-Germanic witi, from Proto-Germanic witją (“knowledge, reason, understanding”), from Proto-Indo-European wóyde (“to know, see”) from weyd.Some forms of the name also originate from the Latin word vīta ("life"). The Germanic personal name Wido, is a Saxon pre 7th Century word meaning "the lively one". Its popular diminutive version Wi was later adopted by the Normans, while in the rest of France, when Old French w often converted to g, it took the forms Gy and Guy. Wido was confused with Latin Vitus (today Vito), which in actuality, in many languages all names are equivalent.In Hebrew the name also comes from the word גַיא ("ravine, valley"), pronounced /'gai/. In Teutonic it means "warrior". A valley symbolises life, cultivation, perseverance and growth (physical and spiritual). Connected to Hebrew word גוֹי 'goy' ("gentile, nation"), which along with Latin vīta ("life"), Old English witan ("to see, heed, wise men"), Old French gui(d)er ("to guide"), stemming back to Proto-Indo-European weyd ("to know, see")...we can see they are interrelated.
In Hebrew the meaning of the name is Valley, as in the Biblical "Valley of the Shadow of Death" (in Hebrew - "ge tsel ma'vet").
GUY has also a meaning in HEBREW: Guy means a narrow valey or a ravine - a landform narrower than a canyon which is often the product of streamcutting erosion. Guy is mentioned in the Bible / The old Testament (Joshua 15:8) as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Hebrew: גֵיא בֶן־הִנֹּם or גיא בן-הינום); one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City. Guy is a very popular name in Israel.
In Scotland this name is mostly, if not always, used as a shortened form of Gavin. In fact, it never entered my head for a minute that this name had any other root.
Guy is a also a nickname for the French name Guillaume.
Origin of the name 'Guy': rather than from a Germanic form witu or wit, it is better to derive Guy from late Germanic widu (wood) or wid (wide), both with d's not t's. Witu or wit are Old High German (OHG) forms which cannot underlie the French Guy or the Italian Guido. The Germanic component of French is Frankish, Gothic or less commonly Old Norse; that of Italian, Langobardic or Gothic. In all of these Germanic dialects, ths secondary OHG shift from Indo-European *dh to /t/ does not occur: it merely stops at /d/. Proof of the /d/ derivation lies in the Italian form Guido where the /d/ can only stem from late Germanic widu or maybe wid: if OHG witu underlay the Italian form, it would have evolved to *Guito, not *Guido; similarly, the late Germanic suffix -hard evolves to -ardo in Italian, not *-arto, e.g. Bernhard > Bernardo (English Bernard).
Insofar as cognates of Guy and Guido are concerned, one could add the names Woody and Woodrow since the English 'wood' is from Old English wudu, which is itself derived from an earlier widu. [noted -ed]
GUY (pronounced the same as the word "guy" in English) is a male hebrew name, which means "valley". Another possible way of spelling is GAY, which is a transliteration of the hebrew letters gimel, aleph and iod, but it might lead to confusion because it would have a different pronunciation in English as well as some other undesirable meaning for a male name.

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