Nava

נָאוָה

• Gender: Female
• Origin: Modern Hebrew
• Meaning: befitting, beautiful

• Nava is a bright, graceful Hebrew name meaning "beautiful" or "befitting" that traces its roots back to biblical poetry, including the Song of Songs. It has a light, airy quality that feels right at home in the current landscape of short, vowel-forward names, yet it carries a distinctly Jewish identity that sets it apart from the Avas and Mias of the world. It is the kind of name that sounds both ancient and effortlessly modern at the same time.

  Israeli author Nava Semel was a pioneering literary voice who became the first fiction writer in Israel to address the experience of children of Holocaust survivors. Just four letters, but it carries beauty, poetry, and history all at once — punching well above its weight. It sounds like Ava's cooler, more interesting older sister, with the same vowel-forward appeal but a distinctly Jewish soul. The name is rising in Israel and starting to turn heads in English-speaking communities, which means now is the perfect time to claim it.

• Alternate Spellings: Navah, Naava, Naavah
• Potential Sibling Name:
  Hadar
  ,
  Adi
  ,
  Aviv
  ,
  Matan
• Theme: beauty