Ieva
A Lithuanian take on Eve, from the Hebrew for "life". Only about a hundred women in Poland carry it, so most Poles have never met one.
Ieva Pronunciation
What Ieva means
Where Ieva comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Ieva begins in Hebrew, with Chava, the name of the first woman. Readers of the old text understood Chava as "life," the mother of all who live. That understanding traveled west along with the name itself. Lithuanian speakers reshaped Eve into Ieva, and the meaning held. In Polish the same word is życie.
There is a second ieva in Lithuanian. Written with a small letter, it names the bird cherry, Prunus padus, a tree that flowers white in May. Dictionary and given name stand next to each other, one a plant and one a person.
On a Polish class register, Ieva reads as a cousin of Ewa, close without being the same. The v marks the road it took, from Vilnius rather than from Warsaw. Both forms keep the oldest sense of the name: life.
How many people are named Ieva
1 in 212678 women in Poland is named Ieva. 106 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3315 among female names.