Alva
Alva is a boy's name that peaked in 1917, when it was the 294th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 10,695th. About 5,500 Alvas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Alva boys named Alva
Girls and boys called Alva
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Alva crossed from boys to girls in 1979, having already crossed in 1903 and 1912, and has stayed there for 13 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 73% girls, and in 2025 it was 79%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 127 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 20,158
- Estimated living today
- 5,500
- Median age today
- 65
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 294th
- Rank in 2025
- 10,695th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 8,889 / 11,269
How old the living Alvas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 20,158 babies given the name since 1880, about 5,500 are alive — 27 in every hundred. Roughly 520 of them are children and 2,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Alvas
- Alva Myrdal (1902–1986)Swedish sociologist and politician
- Alva Belmont (1853–1933)American suffragette and socialite
- Alva Noto (born 1965)German artist & musician
- Alva Colquhoun (1942–2025)Australian swimmer
People named Alva with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Alva is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Alva is most concentrated in Oklahoma (5.7×), West Virginia (4.6×), Kentucky (3.4×), Missouri (2.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular boys’ names the year Alva peaked:
Alva elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden girls | Alva | 15,041 | 5th |
| Norway girls | Alva | 2,112 | 46th |
| Switzerland girls | Alva | 341 | 208th |
| Denmark girls | Alva | 299 | 48th |
| Ireland girls | Alva | 187 | 430th |
| England and Wales girls | Alva | 165 | 1,711th |
| France girls | Alva | 145 | 1,464th |
| Scotland girls | Alva | 14 | 625th |
| Belgium girls | Alva | 6 | 1,148th |
| Ireland boys | Alva | 4 | 290th |
| England and Wales boys | Alva | 3 | 4,749th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Alva: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Alva | 326 | 0.026% | 157th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Alva | 15 | 0.003% | 434th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Alva is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.04% of children were given it – 133 of them.
Alva by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 315 | 64th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Alva among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Alva +1 spelling | 1,559 | 2,030 |
| Finland boys | Alva | — | 9 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Alva against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.