Word.ws English Dictionary

Sigourney

/sɪˈɡɔː(ɹ)ni/

Sigourney proper noun: a surname from French.

Proper noun

Sigourney (plural Sigourneys)

  1. (rare) A surname from French.
  2. (rare) A male given name transferred from the surname.
    • “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".]1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 3, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN
  3. (rare) A female given name transferred from the surname.
    • 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.2015, Interesting Literature, Five Fascinating Facts about The Great Gatsby
  4. A small city, the county seat of Keokuk County, Iowa, United States.

Forms of Sigourney

pluralSigourneys
alternative formSigournay

Origin of Sigourney

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.

Questions about Sigourney

What does Sigourney mean?
Sigourney means a surname from French.
What part of speech is Sigourney?
Sigourney is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Sigourney?
Sigourney is pronounced /sɪˈɡɔː(ɹ)ni/.

Words near Sigourney in the dictionary

  1. signwriters
  2. signwriting
  3. sigogglin
  4. Sigournay
  5. Sigournays
  6. Sigourney
  7. Sigourneys
  8. Sigrdrífa
  9. Sigrid
  10. sigrim
  11. sigs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Sigourney (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Sigourney.wav.

Cite this entry: “Sigourney.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sigourney. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.