Alva — #8948 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Alva

The Social Security Administration has registered 11,263 babies named Alva between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Alva currently holds the #8948 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1917, when 317 babies received it in a single year. Alva is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 8,867 additional births since 1880.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Alva performed strongest in the 1920s, accumulating 2,551 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Alva shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Ohio, which accounts for 636 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Oklahoma and Missouri. In total, SSA state-level files list Alva in 32 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Alva in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 11,263 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.