Avis - Origin and Meaning of the name

[ 2 syll. a-vis, av-is ] The girl name Avis is pronounced EYVIHS ^KEY. Avis is of Germanic origin and it is used mainly in English. Avis' meaning is 'bird, desired'. Derived from avis 'bird' ; avi 'desired'. An old form of the name is the Germanic Aveza. The name is of obscure origin. It could be from the Norman French form of Aveza, itself from various names starting with 'av-', and first introduced to England by the Normans. Avis was popular in the late Middle Ages, as it was often associated with the Latin feminine noun 'avis'. In literature, a form of the name appeared in the Thomas Hardy novel The Well-Beloved (1897) as the name of the fictional character Avice Caro.

A variation of Avis is the German Aveza. Another form of the name is the English spelling variant Avice.

In addition, Avis is an English variation of the German Hedwig. See also the related forms, the German Ava and the English Avila.

Avis is uncommon as a baby name for girls. At the modest height of its usage in 1912, 0.061% of baby girls were named Avis. It ranked at #238 then. The baby name has since fallen out of favor, and is used only on an infrequent scale now. Within all girl names in its group, Avis was nevertheless the most regularly used in 2007.

^KEY: Pronunciation for Avis: EY as in "ate (EY.T)" ; V as in "vee (V.IY)" ; IH as in "it (IH.T)" ; S as in "sea (S.IY)"

Popularity Trend
for Avis
from 1900 to 2007

Variant Popularity Chart
for Avis
in 2007