Hershy is a Yiddish-Hebrew nickname form related to names like Hersh, meaning 'deer' in traditional Jewish usage.
Hershy is a Yiddish diminutive of Hershel or Hirsh, derived from the German and Yiddish word 'Hirsch,' meaning 'deer.' In Ashkenazi Jewish naming tradition, Hirsh was one of the most common names, often used as the Yiddish vernacular equivalent for the Hebrew name Naphtali — based on the biblical blessing in Genesis 49:21 comparing Naphtali to a swift deer. The deer held symbolic significance in Jewish tradition as an emblem of grace, swiftness, and beauty, and the name appears throughout Eastern European Jewish communities from the shtetls of Poland and Russia to the immigrant neighborhoods of early twentieth-century New York.
The most widely recognized cultural imprint of the Hershey name in America belongs to Milton S. Hershey, the Pennsylvania-born confectioner who founded the Hershey Chocolate Company in 1894 and built an entire planned community — Hershey, Pennsylvania — for his workers, becoming one of the great philanthropist industrialists of the Gilded Age. While Milton's fame attached the name to chocolate in the American popular imagination, in Jewish communities the name Hershy retained its warm, intimate quality as a friendly diminutive.
It belongs to a category of Yiddish names — alongside Moishy, Yitzy, and Shmuly — that feel simultaneously old-world and endearingly personal. Today Hershy is most commonly found in Hasidic and traditional Orthodox Jewish communities, where Yiddish naming conventions remain vibrantly alive.