Willy or Willie is a masculine given name or nickname. It may refer to:

People

Given name or nickname

Henry Gauthier-Villars (8 August 1859 – 12 January 1931) or Willy, his nom-de-plume, was a French fin-de-siecle writer and music critic who is today mostly known as the mentor and first husband of Colette. Other pseudonyms used by Gauthiers-Villars are: Henry Maugis, Robert Parville, l’Ex-ouvreuse du Cirque d’été, L’Ouvreuse, L’Ouvreuse du Cirque d’été, Jim Smiley, Henry Willy, Boris Zichine.

Biography

Born on 8 August 1859 in Villiers-sur-Orge, Essonne into a bourgeois Catholic family, he attended the Lycee Fontanes and later the Jesuit Collège Stanislas in Paris. He became fluent in Latin and German. In 1885, he obtained a law degree and subsequently started with a job in the family’s publishing firm of Gauthier-Villars.

Willy was a ladies man; Rachilde described him "as a man of the world, a brilliant Parisian rake". In 1889, he met Colette, 14 years younger than he was; they married on 15 May 1893. As a writer and music critic he was an incessant and effective self-promoter, under whose directions his "slaves" wrote articles and novels. His ghostwriters may or may not have received recognition but participated because publication under the Willy name secured a high publication rate and good income. With his literary workshops, Willy published more than 50 novels.Curnonsky was one of his ghostwriters, as was his fellow gastronomist Marcel Boulestin. His participation varied and included conceptionalizing, editing, and adding sections, plots, and puns. Henry's favourite song which he could often be heard singing on his way to dinner was I am Henery the Eighth.

Keiko (earlier Siggi) (c. 1976 – December 12, 2003) was a male orca who portrayed Willy in the 1993 film Free Willy.

History

Keiko, whose name means "lucky one" in the Japanese language but is given only to females, was captured near Reyðarfjörður, Iceland in 1979 and sold to the Icelandic aquarium in Hafnarfjörður. Three years later he was sold to Marineland in Ontario where he first started performing for the public and developed skin lesions indicative of poor health. He was then sold to Reino Aventura (now named Six Flags Mexico), an amusement park in Mexico City, in 1985. He was the star of the movie Free Willy in 1993.

The publicity from his role in Free Willy led to an effort by Warner Brothers Studio to find him a better home. Donations from the studio and Craig McCaw led to the establishment of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation in February 1995. With donations from the foundation and millions of school children, the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon was given over $7 million to construct facilities to return him to health with the hope of returning him to the wild. UPS provided ground transportation to the nearby Newport Municipal Airport in a specialized container. Before he left the amusement park, he performed for the public for the last time. Weighing 3500 kg (7720 pounds), he was transported by air in a C-130 Hercules donated by UPS. During the process of transferring him to the plane, trouble occurred but he remained unharmed.