Holiday Calendar

National Levi Day

Next celebratedMonday, August 23, 2027

Levi has appeared on every annual list of American boys' names since 1880. The day marks the name in all its spellings, from the Israelite tribe of Levi to the man who put it on a pair of jeans.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEAugust 23
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The federal record carries nothing for it.

National Levi Day circulates on observance calendars each 23 August. A controlled search finds no Federal Register footprint for the name, and no founder, establishing organisation, proclamation or first observance has been documented.

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INTRO

Three spellings in three American records

National Levi Day honors a name that one famous bearer had to choose for himself. A young Bavarian immigrant stood in front of a New York census taker in July 1850 and gave his name as Levi. The clerk wrote down Levy.

He had been born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria. His 1851 citizenship papers spelled it Loeb again. By 1853 he was in business in San Francisco as Levi Strauss.

The day is for the name, not the man. The Social Security Administration has counted 215,013 American boys named Levi. Its annual lists run back to 1880.

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ORIGINS

Levi Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name begins inside a birth story. In Genesis 29:34 Leah bears a third son and says that her husband will at last become attached to her. The Hebrew word in her mouth is yillaveh, and the boy is called Levi.

Reference works are more careful than the verse is. Behind the Name says the name possibly means joined or attached, and files it under uncertain etymology.

CHAPTER 01

What the Levites got instead

Levi's descendants became the Levites, the tribe that served the sanctuary. Numbers 18 gives them no territorial share at all and assigns them tithes instead.

The arrangement outlived the Temple it was written for. Levites remain exempt from pidyon haben, the ceremony that redeems a firstborn son.

CHAPTER 02

An English name after the Reformation

For most of its history Levi stayed a specifically Jewish name. A second Levi appears in the New Testament, a son of Alphaeus who might be the apostle Matthew. Even so, the name came into English Christian use only after the Protestant Reformation.

CHAPTER 03

A hundred years down, half a century back

American record keeping caught the name near a high point and then watched it sink. In 1880 Levi accounted for roughly one in a thousand of the boys' births the government listed. By 1965 that share had fallen to about one in seventeen thousand.

It never actually went away. Levi stayed inside the top thousand in every published year, with its worst showing in 1965. Its share of listed male births is now ninety-nine times that low point.

CHAPTER 04

A day with no author

The observance has none of this documentation behind it. No founder, no proclamation, and no first observance can be sourced for it. A search of the Federal Register returns nothing for the name.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Loeb Strauss born in Bavaria

The future Levi Strauss was born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, on 26 February.

Riveted pockets patented

Strauss and the tailor Jacob Davis received US patent 139,121 for an improvement in fastening pocket openings.

Girls named Levi first appear

Six girls given the name reach the girls' list for the first time, and none do so again until 1975.

Levi Stubbs tops the chart

Reach Out I'll Be There, sung lead by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops, spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

A stadium takes the name

Levi Strauss and Co. bought naming rights to the San Francisco 49ers stadium in a 20 year contract worth $220 million.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Levi Day Matters

LINEAGE

The second aliyah is traditionally kept for a Levite.

Levite status passes through the male line, and the second aliyah at the Torah reading is traditionally reserved for a Levite. My Jewish Learning cautions that a Levi or Levy surname often marks that lineage but does not guarantee it.

SURNAME

Israel's second most common family name

At the end of 2013 Israel counted 98,275 people with the surname Levy, second only to Cohen. That is 1.12 percent of the population.

COMMERCE

The brand took a first name, not a surname

The jeans are named for Levi Strauss's given name rather than his family name, which is why a global trademark reads Levi's. The company extended its stadium naming rights in 2024 in a deal worth a combined $170 million.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Levi Day by the Numbers

#12
Levi's rank among US boys, 2025
9,642
US boys named Levi in 2025
13,930
Boys' names on SSA's 2025 list
0.73%
Listed Levis who were girls, 2025

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Levi Day

The privacy rule hides the girls and not the boys

The Social Security Administration excludes any name given to fewer than five babies in a year. Levi clears that floor in every one of the 146 boys' lists. It falls below it in 94 of the 146 girls' lists, which means girls named Levi were mostly invisible rather than absent.

Levy and Leevi are separate names in the same data

The federal files treat every spelling as its own entry. Levy appears in all 146 years and accounts for 4,256 births. Leevi, the Finnish form of Levi, does not appear at all until 1979 and accounts for 812.

It was already there in the very first list

The 1880 file is the earliest the agency publishes, and Levi is in it, with 112 boys and a rank of 118. The name did not arrive in the American record. It was there when the record started.

The tribe with no land held 48 towns

Joshua 21 counts 48 towns, each with its pastures, belonging to the Levites. They sit inside the holdings of the other tribes. The one tribe granted no territory of its own ended up with towns in everybody else's.

A Levi was called the Underground Railroad's president

Levi Coffin, a Quaker born in 1798, was called the president of the Underground Railroad. More than 3,000 fugitives from slavery passed through his Indiana home.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Levi Day Around the World

Netherlands

ranked 10th among boys' names in 2025

Germany

ranked 18th among boys' names in 2025

England and Wales

ranked 107th among boys' names in 2025

Israel

ranked 81st as a given name in 2024

Finland

Leevi ranked 20th in 2025

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Levi Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up the name in the federal lists

The Social Security Administration's national name files are free to download and cover every year it has published. Tracing one name across them takes a few minutes and no special software.

READ

Read the verse the name comes from

Genesis 29:34 is short enough to read in under a minute, and the naming happens inside Leah's own speech rather than in a narrator's aside. Reading it in place gives you something no dictionary entry does.

COMPARE

Compare the spellings side by side

Pull up Levi, then Levy, then Leevi in the same set of files. Each has its own shape, and reading them together tells you more than any single spelling does.

ASK

Ask a Levi how the name was chosen

A name travels into a family by a specific route, and the route is rarely the one a name book gives. Asking gets you that answer, which no dataset records.

PASS

Pass the day to someone who carries it

No organization runs this observance and no campaign promotes it. Handing it on to a Levi is the entire mechanism it has.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Levi Day?

1 / 8

What first name was Levi Strauss given at birth?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing anywhere that could be found, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

14sources
7primary records
3independently dated
Primary records
Social Security Administration2026-03
Popular Baby Names: National Data
Every name given to at least five US babies a year, 1880 to 2025.
View source
Social Security Administration
Popular Baby Names: Beyond the Top 1000 Names
Explains the five-occurrence privacy cutoff applied to the name files.
View source
Sefaria
Genesis 29
Leah names her third son Levi after saying her husband will become attached to her.
View source
Sefaria
Numbers 18
The passage giving the Levites tithes in place of any territorial inheritance.
View source
Levi Strauss and Co.
Our History
The company's own account of its 1853 founding and the 1873 riveted trouser patent.
View source
Levi Strauss and Co.2024-01-25
LS and Co. Extends Levi's Stadium Naming Rights and 49ers Partnership
Dates the original naming rights deal to May 2013 and announces a $170 million extension.
View source
Federal Register
Federal Register Documents API
Searchable index of US federal notices, rules, and presidential proclamations.
View source
Additional coverage
Immigrant Entrepreneurship
Levi Strauss
Scholarly life of Strauss, including the 1850 census entry recording him as Levy.
View source
NBC Bay Area
Levi's Stadium: 20-Year, $220M Naming Rights Deal for San Francisco 49ers Stadium
Reports the terms announced by the company's chief executive in 2013.
View source
Behind the Name
Levi
Etymology, biblical background, and current national rankings for the name.
View source
Behind the Name
Leevi
Identifies Leevi as the Finnish form of Levi and gives its Finnish ranking.
View source
My Jewish Learning
Levites Today
How Levite status passes down and what honors it still carries in synagogue.
View source
Ynetnews2014-01-15
What are most common surnames in Israel?
Population and Immigration Authority counts of Israel's most common surnames.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Levi Coffin
Life of the Quaker abolitionist called the president of the Underground Railroad.
View source
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