Neva - Name Meaning and Popularity -

Meaning of Neva

Neva—pronounced NEE-vuh in English and NEH-bah in Spanish—is a feminine given name whose appeal rests on a confluence of linguistic, geographic, and historical currents: as a clipped form of the nineteenth-century favorite Geneva it carries the gentle, lace-work elegance of Victorian naming fashions; through Spanish it aligns with nieve, “snow,” and thus with the Marian title Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, drawing quiet devotional overtones of purity; and by evoking the Neva River that bisects St Petersburg it inherits a faint aura of imperial Russian grandeur, itself traced to Finno-Ugric roots signifying simply “water.” These intersecting strands have allowed the name to persist in American usage for nearly a century and a half—initially hovering around the 200th position in the 1880s, then receding mid-century, yet maintaining a low-level, uninterrupted presence that today places it near rank 900—demonstrating a resilience rare among names of comparable brevity. In contemporary practice Neva offers parents a succinct, internationally intelligible option whose semantic palette ranges from crystalline whiteness to riverine depth, securing a refined individuality without sacrificing historical pedigree.