Sydney

Sydney (m) The preferred spelling in Scotland of a name
also found as Sidney. The Christian name is a transferred
use of the surname, which in turn is a reduction of ‘Saint
Denis.’ The name was very popular in Britain from 1875-
1925, but it then faded away. In Scotland it was in 61st
position in 1935. The late nineteenth-century popularity
of the name may have owed something to Sydney Carton, in Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities (1859), who heroically sacrifices himself, taking the place of Darney on the guillotine. His famous last thought was: ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’

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