A form related to Eve/Chava, from Hebrew meaning 'life' or 'living one.'
Havah is the authentic Hebrew form of one of the oldest names in the Abrahamic scriptural tradition. In the Book of Genesis, Adam names his companion Chavah (חַוָּה), which the biblical text itself glosses as "mother of all living" — the root being chayah, meaning "to live" or "to give life." In the Greek Septuagint this became Eua, in Latin Heva, and eventually the English Eve.
Havah (sometimes spelled Chava) is thus not a variant but the original, the name as it was first spoken in Hebrew antiquity, carrying an unbroken thread back to the earliest layers of written human culture. In Jewish communities, Chava/Havah has remained in continuous use as a given name, never requiring revival because it never fell out of favor. It appears in the Mishnah and Talmud, in medieval Jewish poetry, and in the folk tradition immortalized by Sholem Aleichem's Tevye stories — the character Chava, Tevye's daughter who falls in love outside the faith, gave the name a particular bittersweet resonance that carried into the global imagination through the musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Beyond Jewish tradition, Havah has found new admirers among parents who want to recover the name's Hebraic authenticity rather than use the mediated English "Eve." There is a directness and warmth to the sound — the aspirated H opening, the full broad vowels — that the Latinate form loses. Choosing Havah is in some sense choosing etymology itself: it is the name before translation, the word in its original breath.