Tova
Hebrew at root, from a word meaning "good". Barely present in Poland: about 42 women carry it and no girls have been given it in years, so most Poles have never met one.
Tova Pronunciation
What Tova means
Where Tova comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Tova begins with one Hebrew word, tov, meaning good. Add the feminine ending and the adjective becomes a name for a woman. The same tov sits inside the wish mazel tov, where it keeps that old sense. The meaning stays near the surface: good, dobra in Polish.
Among the women who have carried it is the American actress Tovah Feldshuh, born in December 1948. She acted early under a stage name, then took up her Hebrew name instead, spelling it with a final h. In 1994 she joked that she might as well have gone by Goody Two-shoes, since tovah means good.
The name has no diminutive. A teacher reading a class register in Poland would meet it whole, four letters, with nothing to shorten. The word underneath is still tov: good.
How many people are named Tova
1 in 536758 women in Poland is named Tova. 42 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5976 among female names.
Tova as a middle name
Tova is a first name for 42 women in Poland and a middle name for another 29, a 59/41 split, almost evenly. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1325th, between Taisa (29) and Véronique (29).
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#1323 Tacjana29
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#1324 Taisa29
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#1325 Tova29
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#1326 Véronique29
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#1327 Yasmine29