I learned recently that actress Shawnee Smith (remember The Blob?) had a daughter in 1999 and named her Verve, in part “after a British band” that she and her then-husband really liked.
That band must have been The Verve; their 1997 song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” [vid] was extremely popular circa 1999.
The name Verve has never been used enough to appear in the SSA’s publicly available dataset (which excludes names bestowed fewer than 5 times per year). But similar-sounding word-names like Brave, Ever, and Valor have been picking up steam lately, so do you think we might see Verve in the dataset one day soon? (Would you use it?)
Source: Sitting Pretty – People
I kind of like Verve. It’s close to Verna/Verne/Laverne. It’s a little sassier but seems to fit nicely with that group.
And if it’s a choice between Verve, Belita and Sharman, I’m definitely going with Verve!
Verve also has a literal meaning (although being a rather rare word nowadays) and can be interpreted as a “virtue name”. But, what if the child does not grow up to its name?
Another meaning of verve is vivaciousness or peppiness. I can only recall hearing it being used when describing music or fashion. For whatever reason I always associate it specifically with jazz.
So maybe the not so virtuous child might fit this meaning.