German short form of Konrad, from Germanic 'kuoni' (bold) and 'rad' (counsel), meaning bold advisor.
Kurt is a German contracted form of Konrad — from the Old High German elements kuon (bold, brave) and rat (counsel) — making it a name that has carried the compressed energy of 'bold counsel' for over a millennium. It entered English primarily through Germanic immigration, particularly among German-American and Swiss-American families, and it has always retained a slightly Continental, no-nonsense character: short, hard-consonanted, unadorned. It is a name that does not ask for your approval.
The twentieth century gave Kurt a remarkable roster of bearers who each inhabited that bold, uncompromising quality in different registers. Kurt Weill brought it to the Berlin cabaret and Broadway, composing some of the most mordant, brilliant music of the century. Kurt Vonnegut, with Slaughterhouse-Five and his black-comic humanism, made it a name associated with sardonic wisdom and survival.
Kurt Cobain — perhaps the most mythologized Kurt of the modern era — turned it into a symbol of raw artistic authenticity and the costs of fame. Swiss tennis titan Roger Federer's father is named Kurt; the physicist Kurt Gödel reshaped the foundations of mathematics. The name has an almost gravitational field of seriousness and intensity around it, yet it wears this weight lightly — it is still just one clipped syllable, utterly unpretentious.