Mavis

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Maviş in TR Türkiye.

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●

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◐

Mavis is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

• a separate given name3.5K records spelled Mavis2 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Ghana

  Also written Maviş

• Greek given name382 records spelled Mavis3 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Greece, United States, South Africa, United Kingdom

  Also written Maviş, Μαβης

• Italian given name342 records spelled Mavis2 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Italy

  Also written Maviş

• Russian given name317 records spelled Mavis10 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, Russia, United Kingdom, Ghana

  Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

  Also written Мавис, Maviş, Мавіс

• Khmer given name270 records spelled Mavis2 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Hong Kong, United States, Singapore, South Africa

  Also written Maviş

• Korean given name240 records spelled Mavis2 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, South Korea, South Africa, United Kingdom

  Also written Maviş

53 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●

Mavis is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

• Colei che canta dolcemente come un uccellino

  as a name·Il grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…

• English: not found before the last decade of the 19th century, and apparently one of the small class of female given names taken from vocabulary words denoting bir s. Mavis is another word for the song-thrush, first attested in Chaucer. It is from Old French, and probably ultimately of Breton origin. Short form (informal): Mave .

  as a word

• In Latin, second-person singular present active indicative of mālō

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

• In Serbo-Croatian, jelo od tijesta, ono što se u gradovima zove Schneeballen

  as a word·Skok, Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (1971-74)

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●

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 132 years between 1893–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

• Mavis Tateb. 1893GBBritish Conservative politician and campaigner for British women's rights (1893-1947)
• Mavis Villiersb. 1911AUAustralian actress
• Mavis Macnaughtonb. 1911IEbadminton player
• Mavis Pughb. 1914GBBritish actress (1914-2006)
• Mavis Freemanb. 1918USAmerican swimmer, Olympic bronze medalist (1918–1988)
• Mavis Leverb. 1921GBBritish cryptoanalyst, diplomat and garden historian (1921-2013)
• Mavis Gallantb. 1922CACanadian writer (1922–2014)
• Mavis Staplesb. 1939USAmerican singer
• Judith Durhamb. 1943AUnot in their usual nameAustralian singer and musician (1943–2022)
• Mavis Heeb. 1974SGSingaporean singer-songwriter

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 · 515 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Mavis?

We estimate roughly 12 thousand people bear Mavis (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.

In which country does Mavis have the most bearers?

Mavis is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled mavis.

How common is Mavis compared with other names?

In the United Kingdom, Mavis is the 645th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.

Is Mavis a male or female name?

Mavis is a female 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 Mavis mean?

Recorded meaning: Not found before the last decade of the 19th century.