Avi
Feminine · “Hebrew "my father”
Avi is given to both — 834 girls and 6,087 boys since 1880. See Avi as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Avi in the female column is a small puzzle with two answers. In Hebrew, Avi is a men's name and an element meaning "my father" — it opens Avraham, Avigdor and Aviel. But it is also the natural clipping of Avigail and of Avery, both of which are female, and in American use the second route now supplies most of the girls.
How old is the name Avi?
Avi first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Avi is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 800 people named Avi are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Avi most popular?
Avi peaked in 2022, reaching #2856 nationally. Today it ranks #6838, 3,982 places below that high. See the whole 2022 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From av to Avi
The story of Avi
Hebrew builds kinship sentence-names freely: Avigail is "my father is joy", Avital is "my father is dew", Aviva is "springtime". Clipping any of them to Avi is ordinary Israeli practice, and Israeli usage treats Avi as male largely because the most common full names beginning that way — Avraham, Avner, Aviv — are male. The American female entries, rising to a peak in 2022, come from a different direction entirely: Avery has been a top-twenty girls' name since 2010, and Avi is what it shortens to. The two traditions have arrived at the same three letters from opposite ends.
Meaningscholars disagree
Hebrew "my father"; or a clipping of Avigail or Avery
The Hebrew element avi is settled: av is father, and the -i suffix is the first-person possessive. But that reading belongs to the men's name. As a girls' name, Avi is generally short for Avigail — "my father is joy" — or for Avery, an English surname from a Germanic personal name unrelated to Hebrew. The three sources give three different answers and the spelling does not distinguish them.
How the name formed
- av
- Avigail
- Avi
Related forms: אבי · Avery · Aviva
Pronouncing Avi
AH-vee
Hebrew stresses the second syllable: ah-VEE. American English moves it to the first, AH-vee or AY-vee. The AY-vee reading comes from Avery and is common where that is the source name.
Nicknames for Avi
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1979
- Most girls named
- 202259 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2856reached in 2022
- Change vs 2024
- −40.7%16 in 2025, from 27
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Avi in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- אבי in Hebrew — same name
- Avery in English — related form
- Aviva in Hebrew — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Colorado.
Avis among us
people named Avi are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 100,454 born in 2025 was named Avi
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Avi
- #6838
- Avi on the 2025 chart
- #931
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Avi went to 16 girls in 2025, but Avy is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 29, which makes it the 931st most-given girls’ name of the year — 5,907 places above the chart.
- Avi16
- Avy13
About 1 girl in 55,423 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 100,454 for Avi itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Angelee test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Avi's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Angelee climbed just as high around 1970, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Angelee's path sketches the road Avi is walking now.
Avi sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Avi beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Avi in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Three letters, two syllables, and no possible mispronunciation of the consonants.
- It works as a full name or as a short form for Avigail, Aviva or Avery.
- It is genuinely international, used in Israel, India and English-speaking countries.
- It is a men's name in Israel and will be read that way by Hebrew speakers.
- The stress and the first vowel both vary, giving three common pronunciations.
- Very short names offer little formal register for adult professional use.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Avi
Feminine · #6838 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Avis are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Avi are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Avi?
- Avi is the most-used spelling in US records — 16 of the 29 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Avy.
- How popular is the name Avi in 2025?
- Avi ranks #6838 among US girl names in 2025, with 16 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Avi?
- About 1 in every 100,454 US girls born in 2025 was named Avi — 16 in all.
- Will my child share the name Avi with classmates?
- Avi will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Avi
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Malana#6838 · Jeannie#6838 · Maxie#6838 · Nicol#6838 · Chaney#6838 · Keana#6838 · Concetta#6838 · Pheobe#6838
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Avi? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Avi and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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