Sigourney
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A surname from French. rare
- 2 A male given name transferred from the surname. rare
"“Please come and see me. . . . Phone book. . . . Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard. . . . My aunt. . . .” [In the novel, "Mrs. Sigourney Howard" means "the wife of Mr. Sigourney Howard".]"
- 3 A female given name transferred from the surname. rare
"The actress Sigourney Weaver took her ‘stage’ name from Sigourney Howard, a minor character mentioned in The Great Gatsby. But what is also worth noting is the fact that the character’s name, ‘Mrs Sigourney Howard’, actually refers to the husband, so Sigourney is a male given name in the novel."
- 4 A small city, the county seat of Keokuk County, Iowa, United States.
Example
More examples"The actress Sigourney Weaver played a black-haired woman in the movie Alien, but was a brunette in the movie Avatar."
Etymology
According to Ernest Nègre in his book Toponymie générale de la France (1990), the French placename Sigournais comes from Old French Segurniaci, which itself has been derived from Latin Secorinus + -acum. So it appears that the resemblance to Germanic dithematic names starting with *segaz is superficial.
Related phrases
More for "sigourney"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.