Avi
- Pronunciation
- [A-vi]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Father
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Avi
Avi is a warm, compact Hebrew name meaning "father," often used as an affectionate short form of longer names built on the same root, such as Aviel or Avraham. In Hebrew, the element av sits at the heart of countless names tied to ideas of fatherhood, protection, and lineage, giving Avi a quietly weighty meaning despite its small and friendly size. It is a name that carries generations of tradition in just two syllables.
That brevity is exactly what makes it feel so contemporary. The two light syllables, A-vi, are easy to say in nearly any language, and the name slots neatly into the modern preference for short, vowel-friendly boys' names that travel well across cultures and borders. It feels approachable and gentle while still carrying real substance, a combination that has helped many such names rise in recent years. The name pairs an ancient meaning with a thoroughly modern lightness, warm and unpretentious in equal measure.
Avi first entered the US Social Security top-1000 for boys in 2015 and climbed to its peak in 2022 at rank #718. It remained on the list in 2024, at rank #842, with roughly 2,446 boys given the name across its tracked years. The overall pattern is one of steady, recent growth — a small name making a genuine and increasingly visible impression on the American naming landscape.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Avi
US Popularity History (2015–2025)
Annual US births named Avi by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2022 with 366 boys named Avi (boy rank #718 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #832 for boys (297 US births). That's 114 places below its 2022 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.
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Where in the US Is Avi Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Avi the strongest states are New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #363 | 203 |
| 2 | Massachusetts | #446 | 103 |
| 3 | New York | #516 | 290 |
| 4 | Maryland | #592 | 67 |
| 5 | Washington | #628 | 87 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #631 | 101 |
| 7 | Colorado | #662 | 43 |
| 8 | Illinois | #696 | 117 |
| 9 | California | #756 | 320 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #770 | 15 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Avi in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Avi?
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 Avi to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Avi against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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