Tova
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Tova is a given name, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Swedish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Tova är ett nordiskt namn, ursprungligen en smekform till namn på → Tor- och en efterled på f-/v-, t.ex.
- SESweden1 in 2.9K◐
- USUnited States1 in 140K
- FIFinland1 in 66K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈6.1K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 225 ●
- 1 in 2.9K ◐
across 7 countries
recorded for this name
19K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Това in RU Russia, UA Ukraine.
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●
Tova är ett nordiskt namn, ursprungligen en smekform till namn på → Tor- och en efterled på f-/v-, t.ex. Thorfridh. Det var populärt årtiondena runt millennieskiftet. En känd namnbärare är sångerskan med artistnamnet Towa Carson (f. 1936). I den finlandssvenska almanackan 12 december.
Sources 1
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | #528 | 3,526△ | 1.4K rec. | 1 in 2.9K | 3.5K | Tova | 38 |
| US United States | — | 2,383 | 14K rec. | 1 in 140K | 2.4K | Tova | 225 |
| IL Israel | — | 602 | 509 rec. | — | — | Tova | 48 |
| CA Canada | — | 497 | 342 rec. | — | 2 | Tova | 50 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 400 | 352 rec. | — | 3 | Tova | 39 |
| AU Australia | — | 294 | 274 rec. | — | 1 | Tova | 41 |
| FR France | — | 181 | 130 rec. | — | — | Tova | 40 |
| AR Argentina | — | 114 | 99 rec. | — | 2 | Tova | 14 |
| FI Finland | — | 84△ | 15 rec. | 1 in 66K | 110 | Tova | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | 76 | 10 rec. | — | 66 | Tova | 5 |
| ID Indonesia | — | 71 | 21 rec. | — | — | Tova | 23 |
| MX Mexico | — | 66 | 323 rec. | — | — | Tova | 29 |
Roughly 3.5K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 2.9K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English14K61%
- Swedish1.6K7%
- Hebrew1.2K5%
- Spanish8674%
- Finnish6483%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 14,307 | 61% |
| Swedish | 1,554 | 7% |
| Hebrew | 1,227 | 5% |
| Spanish | 867 | 4% |
| Finnish | 648 | 3% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Tova 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.
Bondadosa
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
1 Jewish: modern Hebrew name meaning ‘good’ (cf. TOBIAS ). 2 Swedish: from the Old Norse female personal name T fa , a short form of orfríðr (see TURID ). Top
as a word
In ivv, a species of plant, vine, used for _kapan’asgaw_ method of fishing by means of suffocation
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In fj, a flat piece of land, formerly planted with yams
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Hungarian, (farther) away
as a wordkaikki.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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1942 | 5 |
| 1948 | 5 |
| 1950 | 5 |
| 1952 | 5 |
| 1953 | 12 |
| 1954 | 9 |
| 1955 | 5 |
| 1957 | 8 |
| 1958 | 5 |
| 1959 | 16 |
| 1961 | 10 |
| 1962 | 18 |
| 1963 | 13 |
| 1964 | 15 |
| 1965 | 8 |
| 1966 | 14 |
| 1967 | 9 |
| 1968 | 24 |
| 1969 | 20 |
| 1970 | 21 |
| 1971 | 24 |
| 1972 | 24 |
| 1973 | 21 |
| 1974 | 23 |
| 1975 | 32 |
| 1976 | 27 |
| 1977 | 28 |
| 1978 | 31 |
| 1979 | 37 |
| 1980 | 32 |
| 1981 | 40 |
| 1982 | 30 |
| 1983 | 51 |
| 1984 | 63 |
| 1985 | 51 |
| 1986 | 52 |
| 1987 | 50 |
| 1988 | 44 |
| 1989 | 35 |
| 1990 | 37 |
| 1991 | 44 |
| 1992 | 34 |
| 1993 | 37 |
| 1994 | 42 |
| 1995 | 39 |
| 1996 | 39 |
| 1997 | 42 |
| 1998 | 35 |
| 1999 | 31 |
| 2000 | 38 |
| 2001 | 44 |
| 2002 | 46 |
| 2003 | 39 |
| 2004 | 43 |
| 2005 | 43 |
| 2006 | 37 |
| 2007 | 54 |
| 2008 | 55 |
| 2009 | 42 |
| 2010 | 55 |
| 2011 | 44 |
| 2012 | 62 |
| 2013 | 46 |
| 2014 | 42 |
| 2015 | 70 |
| 2016 | 67 |
| 2017 | 73 |
| 2018 | 60 |
| 2019 | 55 |
| 2020 | 72 |
| 2021 | 54 |
| 2022 | 81 |
| 2023 | 94 |
| 2024 | 66 |
| 2025 | 66 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 75 years between 1942–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Tova Sanhadrayb. 1906ILIsraeli politician (1906-1993)
- Tova Berlinskib. 1915ILIsraeli painter
- Tova Ben Zvib. 1928ILIsraeli singer
- Tova Ilanb. 1929ILIsraeli politician
- Tova Traesnaesb. 1941NONorwegian-American businesswoman and socialite
- Tova Asherb. 1950ILIsraeli film editor
- Tova Hartmanb. 1957ILIsraeli academic
- Hava Siegelmannb. 1964USnot in their usual namecomputer scientist
- Tova Magnussonb. 1968SESwedish actress and film director
- Tova O'Brienb. 1980NZNew Zealand journalist
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●
Attested in 46 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 3.5K | #756 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 2.9K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.4K | #6,615 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 152 | #45,879 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 110 | #5,069 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 84 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 66 | #10,029 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 66 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 60 | #39,205 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 60 | #39,093 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 44 | #2,495 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 44 | #2,495 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 166 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Tova?
- We estimate roughly 6.1 thousand people bear Tova (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
- In which country does Tova have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 3.5 thousand people bear Tova in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled tova.
- Where is Tova most common?
- Tova is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.9 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is Tova compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Tova is the 528th most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
- Is Tova a male or female name?
- Tova 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 Tova mean?
- Recorded meaning: Tova är ett nordiskt namn, ursprungligen en smekform till namn på → Tor- och en efterled på f-/v-, t.ex.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/tovaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Tova” — the 528th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.