Chances are you don’t have any friends named Nevaeh. Chances are today’s toddlers will.
In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.
The spectacular rise of Nevaeh (commonly pronounced na-VAY-uh) has little precedent, name experts say. They watched it break into the top 1,000 of girls’ names in 2001 at No. 266, the third-highest debut ever.
Four years later it cracked the top 100 with 4,457 newborn Nevaehs, having made the fastest climb among all names since the government started keeping track of them more than a century ago.
Nevaeh, tucked between Madeline (69) and Evelyn (71), is not in the Bible or any religious text. It is not from a foreign language.
It is not the name of a celebrity, real or fictional.
Nevaeh is “heaven” spelled backward. The name has hit a cultural nerve with its religious overtones, creative twist and fashionable final “ah” sound.
The surge of Nevaeh can be traced to a single event: the appearance of a Christian rock star, Sonny Sandoval of POD, on MTV in 2000 with his baby daughter, Nevaeh.
Does she understand the meaning of heaven? Sandoval replied, “She knows that is where her grandmother is.”