Lava

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Lova in IN India.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Languages●

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Lava is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

• English given name8.9K records spelled Lava9 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in India, United States, Netherlands, Australia

  Languages: English, Western Frisian, Dutch

  Also written Lävä, Làvà, Lavā, Láva

• Assamese given name1.4K records spelled Lava8 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in India, Türkiye, Iraq

  Languages: Assamese, Bangla

  Also written লাভা, Lābhā, Labha, Luva

• Croatian given name937 records spelled Lava7 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Sweden, India, Türkiye, Bulgaria

  Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

  Also written Лава

50 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Lava is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

• a son of Rama (R); GaneSga (N); Kala (N); Sirya

  as a name·Sunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names

• a particle. a piece; tiny.

  as a name·The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys

• In Kurdish, Prayer, supplication, wish, and heartfelt sincere desires

  as a word·kurdi.sh Kurdish personal names dictionary

• In Czech, alternative form of lavice (“bench”)

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

• In Indonesian, lava: the molten rock ejected by a volcano (hence on the surface) from its crater or fissured sides

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

• Luv RanjanINnot in their usual nameIndian film and producer director

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 168 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lava?

We estimate roughly 266 thousand people bear Lava (counting its spellings and scripts) across 17 countries in our records.

In which country does Lava have the most bearers?

We estimate about 136 thousand people bear Lava in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled lava.

Where is Lava most common?

Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lava is densest in Norway — about 1 in 269 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.

Is Lava a male or female name?

Lava is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.

What does the name Lava mean?

Recorded meaning: The molten rock ejected by a volcano from its crater or fissured sides; magma that has breached the surface of the earth.