From the Spanish city Seville (Sevilla), whose name may derive from Phoenician meaning "lowland."
Sevilla is the Spanish name for Seville, the sun-drenched capital of Andalusia in southern Spain, and as a given name it carries the full weight of that city's extraordinary history. Seville's own name traces back through Arabic "Ishbiliyya" and Latin "Hispalis" to a pre-Roman Iberian settlement, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe. To give a child this name is to invoke a place that has been Phoenician trading post, Roman capital, Visigothic seat, flourishing city under the Moorish Caliphate, and the point from which Spanish galleons departed to chart the Americas.
As a personal name, Sevilla is primarily used in Spanish-speaking communities, particularly in Latin America, where place names from the Iberian Peninsula were adopted with pride by families honoring regional roots or simply drawn to the name's musicality. It is the kind of name found in nineteenth-century baptismal registers in Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico — stately and geographic in the tradition of names like Burgos, Toledo, or Valencia. The city of Seville itself lends the name potent cultural associations: Carmen, Bizet's fiery opera set entirely within its walls; the Giralda tower; the scent of orange blossoms that perfumes its streets each spring.
Sevilla remains genuinely uncommon as a given name even in Spanish-speaking countries, which is precisely its appeal. It is lyrical — five syllables that roll with a Mediterranean warmth — and carries an implicit story of civilization, art, and sun. As a name it suggests breadth of horizon and a connection to a past grander than any single family's memory.