Levi · Daily fortune

Levi is a masculine name of Hebrew origin. Behind the Name says it possibly means "joined, attached"; Wikipedia traces it to the Hebrew verb לוה (lava) "to join" or "connect". In the Old Testament, Levi was the third son of Jacob and Leah and the ancestor of the Levites, the priestly tribe to which Moses and Aaron belonged; the name appears again in the New Testament for a son of Alphaeus, who may be the apostle Matthew. It entered English use as a Christian name after the Protestant Reformation, and in 2025 it ranked #12 among American boys' names.

Behind the Name is deliberately cautious: it says Levi "possibly means 'joined, attached' in Hebrew" rather than stating the gloss as settled. Wikipedia gives the same reading with the underlying verb, deriving the name from Hebrew לוה (lava) "to join" or "connect" and rendering it "attached" or "joining". The two sources agree, and the traditional biblical wordplay in Genesis points the same way, but the hedge in the primary source is the reason this profile records the etymology as likely rather than established.

The name's history is inseparable from the tribe it founded. Behind the Name records that Levi was the third son of Jacob and Leah and the ancestor of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, the Levites — the tribe that formed the Israelite priestly class, and to which the brothers Moses and Aaron belonged. A second Levi appears in the New Testament as a son of Alphaeus, whom tradition sometimes identifies with the apostle Matthew. As an English Christian name, Levi only came into use after the Protestant Reformation, part of the same wave that brought Hebrew names out of scripture and onto baptismal registers. Wikipedia's list of bearers shows how it then travelled: nineteenth-century American reformers and businessmen such as the Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin and the jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss, twentieth-century statesmen such as the Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol, and, more recently, fictional bearers such as Levi Ackerman in the manga Attack on Titan.

Levi ranked #12 for boys in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration). That places it among the highest-ranked biblical names that are not perennial classics: unlike Samuel or Michael, Levi spent most of the twentieth century as an unusual, plainly religious choice, and its current position reflects a recent rise rather than a long plateau. Neither Behind the Name nor the Wikipedia article gives a year-by-year American series, so this profile records only the 2025 rank.

English Levi is LEE-vy, /ˈliː.vaɪ/, with a long final vowel that rhymes with "eye". That is not how the name sounds in Hebrew or Dutch, where the second syllable is a plain /i/: Behind the Name gives Hebrew /le.ˈvi/ (stress on the second syllable) and Dutch /ˈleː.vi/. The forms below are the ones Behind the Name lists; pronunciations not shown there are marked as not verified.

Levi reads as two things at once. It is a genuinely ancient priestly name with a tribe attached, and it is also a short, soft, vowel-heavy modern name in the same sound family as Eli, Ezra and Asher — the register of biblical names that parents now choose for texture rather than for doctrine. The Levi Strauss association gives it an unusual amount of everyday Americana, which cuts the solemnity. It has no established short forms, which suits parents who want a name that will be used whole.

The bearers below are the ones named in the Behind the Name entry and the Wikipedia article consulted for this profile; no other list was mined.

Names that share Levi's Old Testament register, its two-syllable soft sound, or its family in scripture.