 Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Cammie King as Bonnie Blue Butler in a scene from the 1939 popular film Gone with the Wind | |
| Pronunciation | /ˈbɒni/ BON-ee |
|---|---|
| Gender | Primarily female |
| Origin | |
| Word/name | Scottish |
| Meaning | Pretty, Attractive, Beautiful, Good |
| Other names | |
| Related names | Bona, Bonaccorso, Bonaparte, Bonaventura, Bonaventure, Boniface, Bonilla, Bonita, Bonney, Bonni, Bonnibel, Bonny |
Bonnie is a Scottish given name and is sometimes used as a descriptive reference, as in the Scottish folk song, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. It comes from the Scots language word "bonnie" (pretty, attractive), or the French bonne (good). That is in turn derived from the Latin word "bonus" (good). The name can also be used as a pet form of Bonita.
The name has been in use, primarily in the Anglosphere, since the 1800s. It has been ranked among the 50 most popular names for newborn girls in the United Kingdom since 2020 and had been rising in popularity for British girls since the 1990s. It was among the 1,000 most used names for newborn girls in the United States between 1880 and 2003, reaching the height of popularity between 1928 and 1966, when it was ranked among the 100 most popular names for newborn American girls. It was also ranked among the 1,000 most popular names for newborn American boys between 1884 and 1953. The name then declined in popularity but has again risen in usage for girls in the United States in recent years and has been ranked among the 1,000 most popular names for newborn girls there since 2014. It has also been among the top 100 names for girls in Australia since 2014, in New Zealand since 2021, and in Sweden since 2019. In Canada, the name was among the 100 most popular names for girls between 1940 and 1973, but has since declined in usage.[1]
Spelling variants in use include Bonney, Bonni and Bonny. Elaborations of the name such as Bonnibel are also used. Other related names, also containing the word element bon, meaning good or attractive in various languages, include the Italian Bona and the Spanish Bonita. Some related given names or surnames include Bonaccorso, Bonaparte, Bonaventura, Boniface, Bonilla, and Bueno.
The increase in usage of the name coincides with its use for characters in movie and television productions. It was the nickname used for Bonnie Blue Butler, the young daughter of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s 1935 novel Gone with the Wind and its 1939 film adaptation, because the child's eyes were said to be “as blue as the bonnie blue flag.” The name gained some notoriety via bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde made about the couple. The name was later used for Bonnie Bennett, a character in the television series The Vampire Diaries, which aired from 2009 to 2017, and for Bonnie Anderson, the toddler who inherits Andy's toys, in the 2010 film Toy Story 3 and the 2019 sequel Toy Story 4. [2] [3] [4]
.jpg)
