Diminutive of August or Augustine, from Latin 'augustus' meaning great, magnificent, or venerable.
Augie is the friendly, shirtsleeves version of one of Rome's grandest names. It derives from Augustus — from the Latin *augere*, to increase, to make great — the title the Roman Senate bestowed on Gaius Octavius in 27 BCE when he became the first emperor. *Augustus* also carried religious connotations of divine sanction, something consecrated and revered.
The name traveled through Christian Europe as Augustine, carried most famously by Saint Augustine of Hippo, whose *Confessions* (397 CE) remains one of the most widely read memoirs in human history. Augie strips all that imperial gravity down to something warm and human: the neighbor kid, the quick-grinned wanderer. In American literature, Augie achieved its definitive moment with Saul Bellow's 1953 novel *The Adventures of Augie March*, which opens with one of the most famous first lines in American fiction: "I am an American, Chicago born."
Augie March is a restless, curious, democratic everyman — a Jewish kid from the Chicago slums who ricochets through Depression-era America trying to determine the shape of his own fate. The novel won Bellow the National Book Award and installed Augie as a name with genuine literary pedigree: scrappy, ambitious, and fundamentally optimistic about the American experiment. As a given name today, Augie sits in pleasant company with other vintage short-form names enjoying revival — Archie, Theo, Louie, Gus.
It can stand alone or serve as a nickname for August or Augustine. It reads as affectionate and unpretentious, a name that suggests a kid who will charm adults and lead the other children, equal parts mischief and warmth.
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