A short modern form, often used as a nickname for Maverick, conveying independence and nonconformity.
Mav derives from Maverick, a word with one of the most specifically documented etymologies in American English. Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803–1870) was a Texas lawyer, land baron, and cattle owner who, famously and perhaps accidentally, left his cattle unbranded. Neighboring ranchers began calling any unbranded calf a 'maverick,' and the word rapidly generalized to mean any person who refuses to follow the crowd — independent, unaffiliated, ungoverned by convention.
The word passed into popular usage so thoroughly that most people who use it have no idea it was once a man's surname. As a given name, Maverick was used sporadically throughout the twentieth century but accelerated sharply in the United States following the 1986 film Top Gun, in which Tom Cruise played the reckless, rule-defying fighter pilot Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell. The 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick renewed that association powerfully.
By the 2020s, Maverick had risen into the top one hundred boys' names in the United States. Mav, its clipped form, carries all of that connotation in a single syllable — punchy, self-contained, and impossible to mishear. The shift toward Mav reflects a broader trend in baby naming toward short, decisive names that function both as full names and as obvious nicknames simultaneously. Mav sounds equally at home on a child's report card and shouted across a playground — terse, confident, and carrying the long American mythology of the independent spirit in just three letters.