Ava
- Pronunciation
- [A-va]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Medieval Given Names Avis And Aveline
- Origin
- English
About the Name Ava
Ava is a short, vowel-rich name with multiple proposed origins. The most likely root is the medieval Germanic name Awa, found in 9th-century records like that of the abbess Ava of Melk (d. 1127), the earliest known woman writer in the German language. A separate but plausible thread connects Ava to Latin avis (bird), and a third to a Persian-derived word for water or sound. None of these single origins fully explains the name's modern profile — what's certain is that Ava arrived in English-speaking countries through the Norman Conquest and stayed marginal for nearly nine centuries before its sudden 21st-century revival.
The name's modern explosion is largely traceable to a single bearer. Ava Gardner (1922–1990), the North Carolina-born Hollywood star of The Killers and Mogambo, gave Ava a glamorous mid-century imprint that lay dormant for decades. The 21st-century resurgence — driven by celebrity baby announcements and the broader return to short, classical girls' names — pushed Ava into the US top 5 by 2010, where it has remained.
Today the name reads as confidently classic and effortlessly modern at once: only three letters, two syllables, palindrome-adjacent, hard to mispronounce in any language. Common nicknames are scarce because the name is already short — Avie and Av occasionally appear. Direct variants and parallels include Eva (Spanish, German, Czech), Ève (French), Aveline (Old French, the source of the medieval Avis from which some etymologies trace Ava), and the Hebrew Chava.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Ava
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Ava by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 18,053 girls named Ava (girl rank #4 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #11 for girls (7,732 US births). That's 7 places below its 2007 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
Paste the snippet below on any HTML page. Includes a credit link back to 9BabyNames — please keep it intact.
Where in the US Is Ava Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Ava the strongest states are Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #1 | 1,585 |
| 2 | Georgia | #2 | 4,911 |
| 3 | Alabama | #2 | 2,308 |
| 4 | South Carolina | #3 | 2,038 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #3 | 4,560 |
| 6 | District of Columbia | #3 | 391 |
| 7 | Louisiana | #3 | 2,009 |
| 8 | Maryland | #3 | 2,271 |
| 9 | Virginia | #4 | 3,471 |
| 10 | Michigan | #4 | 3,760 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wyoming | #15 | 130 |
| 2 | Vermont | #14 | 150 |
| 3 | Utah | #14 | 1,102 |
| 4 | California | #13 | 11,202 |
| 5 | Alaska | #12 | 245 |
| 6 | Oregon | #12 | 964 |
| 7 | Maine | #11 | 360 |
| 8 | North Dakota | #11 | 302 |
| 9 | Arizona | #10 | 2,096 |
| 10 | New Mexico | #10 | 521 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Ava in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Ava
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Ava.
- Ava Gardner — Movie Actress (1922)
Looking for names like Ava?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Ava to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Ava against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
Ava Baby Name Ideas
- When a Nickname Starts With a Different Letter From the Legal Name: Plan for Initials, Forms, and Daily Use
- Baby Names for Last Names Starting With L: Keep the Repeated L Clear Without Losing Flow
- Baby Names for Last Names Starting With T: Keep the T Seam Clear Without Overcorrecting
- What Is Teddy Short For? From Theodore and Edward to Standalone Teddy
- What Is Evie Short For? From Eve and Evelyn to Evangeline
- Baby Names for Last Names Starting With R: Manage the Repeated R Without Flattening the Surname
- Should Sibling Names Be Similar in Length? Pairing a Short Name With a Long One
- Should First and Middle Names Start With the Same Letter? Testing Alliteration Beyond the Monogram
- Should Sibling Names Have the Same Level of Formality? Pairing Full Classics With Short Modern Names
- Baby Names for Last Names With an Apostrophe: Keep the Full Name Clear on Forms and Aloud
- When Close Family Cannot Pronounce the Baby Name You Chose
- Baby Name Searchability and Digital Privacy: What Parents Can—and Cannot Control
- Choosing a Baby Name From a Culture Outside Your Own: A Respectful Research Guide
- Naming an Adopted Child: Protecting Identity, Continuity, and Future Choice
- English-Korean Bilingual Baby Names: A Romanization, Pronunciation, and Records Checklist
- How to End a Family Naming Tradition With Care: Keeping the Story Without Repeating the Pattern
- Baby Names for Consonant-Heavy Last Names: Creating Space Without Losing Character
- Should You Use a Family Name From Someone You Never Met? Researching an Honor Before Making It Personal
- Should the Runner-Up Baby Name Become the Middle Name? Testing Whether Two Favorites Belong Together
- When a First and Middle Name Share the Same Ending Sound: Deciding Whether the Echo Helps