Luca
Masculine · “From Lucania”
Luca is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 77,521 boys against 1,690 girls since 1880. See Luca as a girl name
Luca is the Italian form of the name behind Luke, and Italy has been writing it down since the Middle Ages — on sculptors' contracts, on the first printed treatise on double-entry bookkeeping. Two syllables, both open, the stress on the first: LOO-kah, a name that ends on a vowel and so almost never gets clipped. In the United States it has been on the books for over a century, but its real rise came late, and it is still climbing.
How old is the name Luca?
Luca first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Luca is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 77,000 people named Luca are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Luca most popular?
Luca peaked in 2025, reaching #14 nationally. Today it ranks #14, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Luca appears on these lists:
- Short and sweet: names of four letters or fewer
- Transatlantic hits: loved on both sides of the ocean
- America's top 100 names right now
- Gorgeous — and about to be everywhere
- Names at their all-time peak, right now
- Two-syllable names, the American default
- all guides
Works in Italian families too:
Where it comes from
From Loukas to Luca
The story of Luca
The line begins with Greek Loukas, the name of the evangelist credited with the third gospel, which passed into Latin as Lucas and spread wherever the Christian calendar went. Italian trimmed the Latin ending to Luca, and it settled in as one of the country's steady, unremarkable-in-the-best-way boys' names — worn by Renaissance figures in Florence and by footballers and filmmakers since. English-speaking countries borrowed it back, largely in the last few decades, alongside Italian food, Italian cinema and a general appetite for names that end in a vowel. It now charts in Britain and Canada as well as the US, and in the Slavic world the parallel form Luka is doing much the same thing.
Meaningscholars disagree
'From Lucania', a region of southern Italy
The standard scholarly derivation traces Greek Loukas to Lucania, the ancient district in Italy's south, making the name essentially 'the man from Lucania'. A second, much-repeated reading links it to Latin lux, 'light' — a connection most etymologists treat as a later association rather than the source. Both are worth knowing; neither has driven the other out.
Cultural footprint
Luca Guadagnino (b. 1971) — Call Me by Your Name director
Luca Pacioli (b. 1440) — Renaissance friar known as the father of accounting
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Loukas
- Lucas
- Luca
Related forms: Luca · Luka · Luke · Lucas · Luc · Luca
Pronouncing Luca
LOO-kah
Stress on the first syllable, the second a clear open 'ah'. Italian says it the same way. Hungarian is the outlier: there, Luca is a girl's name pronounced LOO-tsah.
Nicknames for Luca
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
- 20258,759 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #14reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +9.6%8,759 in 2025, from 7,991
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.
Luca in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Luca in Italian — same name
- Luka in Croatian, Serbian, Slovene — spelling variant
- Luke in English — related form
- Lucas in Spanish, Portuguese — related form
- Luc in French — related form
- Luca in Hungarian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York. International figures from National Records of Scotland, Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada. Sources
Lucas among us
people named Luca are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 195 born in 2025 was named Luca
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Luca
- #14
- Luca on the 2025 chart
- #4
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Luca went to 8,759 boys in 2025, but Luka and Lucca are the same name said out loud. Together the 6 spellings went to 13,502, which makes it the 4th most-given boys’ name of the year — 10 places above the chart.
and 3 rarer spellings.
About 1 boy in 127 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 195 for Luca 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 Raymond test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Luca's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Raymond climbed just as high around 1919, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Raymond's path sketches the road Luca is walking now.
Luca is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Luca is headed
Luca looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 25% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Luca beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Luca in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds for English speakers, with no silent letters and no obvious rival spelling to explain.
- Works in Italian, English, French, German and Romanian without adjustment, and has a close twin in Luka across the Slavic languages.
- Documented on Italian record since the fifteenth century, on painters, sculptors and mathematicians, so it long predates its current wave.
- Recognized in Britain, Scotland and Canada as well as the US — useful for a family with ties in more than one country.
- Two syllables that pair easily with both short and long surnames.
- Luca, Luka, Lucas and Luke all circulate at once right now, so expect a lifetime of gentle corrections about which one it is.
- The American wave is very recent, which means nearly everyone carrying it here is a child. It reads young, and will for another generation.
- In Hungary, Luca is a girl's name with its own feast-day traditions — worth knowing if your family has Hungarian connections.
- A 2021 Pixar film put the name in front of a great many children, so some will hear it as the film first. That fades as the film ages.
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What they receive
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Luca
Masculine · #14 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lucas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 77,000 people named Luca are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Luca?
- Luca is the most-used spelling in US records — 8,759 of the 13,502 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Luka and Lucca.
- How popular is the name Luca in 2025?
- Luca ranks #14 among US boy names in 2025, with 8,759 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Luca?
- About 1 in every 195 US boys born in 2025 was named Luca — 8,759 in all.
- Will my child share the name Luca with classmates?
- Roughly 1 in 8 classrooms will have a child named Luca.
Ranked beside Luca
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Elias#13 · Jack#15 · Levi#12 · Sebastian#16 · Benjamin#11 · Hudson#17 · Lucas#10 · Samuel#18
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Luca? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Luca and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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