Lavar
Masculine
Lavar is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 2,075 boys against 11 girls since 1880.
Lavar's American curve has a single sharp spike in 1977, and the cause is datable to the week. Roots ran over eight consecutive nights in January of that year, watched by an audience that has never been matched, and its young lead was billed as LeVar Burton.
How old is the name Lavar?
Lavar first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Lavar alive today was born around 1982, making them about 43 years old. About 1,800 people named Lavar are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lavar most popular?
Lavar peaked in 1977, reaching #485 nationally. Today it ranks #9714, 9,229 places below that high. See the whole 1977 chart.
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
Our story of Lavar
A television event can name children, but it cannot spell for them. Roots was broadcast in January 1977 and its final night drew one of the largest audiences in American television history; the actor playing the young Kunta Kinte was credited as LeVar Burton, with a capital V in the middle. What appeared on birth certificates that year and the next was mostly Lavar, sometimes Levar, occasionally Lavarr. Parents were writing down a sound they had heard spoken, not copying a name they had read. That gap between what is heard and what is printed is visible all over the data, and it is the reason a single-cause spike usually produces a cluster of spellings rather than one. Burton had been given his own name by his family, built the same way, from a prefix and a stem: the pattern was already a generation old when the broadcast made one instance of it famous.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Lavar has no inherited etymology. It belongs to the American prefix-and-stem family, where La- is attached to a syllable that carries no independent sense. The actor's own full name was Levardis, itself a family coinage; Lavar and LeVar are two spellings of the same sound. The peak is 1977.
Pronouncing Lavar
luh-VAR
Two syllables, stress on the second. LeVar, Levar and Lavar are homophones; the middle capital in LeVar is a styling, not a pronunciation cue.
Nicknames for Lavar
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
- 1915
- Most boys named
- 1977279 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #485reached in 1977
- Change vs 2021
- −22.2%7 in 2025, from 9
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.
Lavars among us
people named Lavar are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 244,011 born in 2025 was named Lavar
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Trinidad test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Lavar's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Trinidad climbed just as high around 1922, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Trinidad's path sketches the road Lavar is walking now.
Lavar 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
Lavar beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Lavar in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables with the weight at the end, which makes it carry.
- Every spelling of it is said the same way.
- Five letters, no silent ones.
- The 1977 spike ties it firmly to one year and one broadcast.
- LeVar is the spelling most people have seen in print.
- It has no meaning to give, and honest accounts should not invent one.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Lavar
Masculine · #9714 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lavars are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,800 people named Lavar are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Lavar in 2025?
- Lavar ranks #9714 among US boy names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Lavar?
- About 1 in every 244,011 US boys born in 2025 was named Lavar — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Lavar with classmates?
- Lavar will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Lavar
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vern#9714 · Abrahm#9714 · Sid#9714 · Hartwell#9714 · Kwan#9714 · Adrean#9714 · Chancey#9714 · Bob#9714
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lavar? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Lavar and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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